*  AMERICAN  MEN  OF  LETTERS  * 


FHOREAU 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

, 

Class 


j&tn  of  letters 

HENKY  D.  THOREAU 


SUmmom  fl^cn  of  ttetterg. 


HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 


BY 

F.  B.   SANBORN. 

REVISED  EDITION. 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
(£&e  0iter?itie  l^re^,  Carabribge 


Copyright,  1882, 
BY  F.  B.  SANBORN. 


All  rights  reserved. 


30S 


MUCH  do  they  wrong  our  Henry  wise  and  kind, 

Morose  who  name  thee,  cynical  to  men,  kv  I     -. 

Forsaking  manners  civil  and  refined 

To  build  thyself  m  Walden  woods  a  den,  — 

Then  flout  society,  flatter  the  rude  hind. 

We  better  knew  thee,  loyal  citizen ! 

Thou,  friendship's  all-adventuring  pioneer, 

Civility  itself  wouldst  civilize : 

Whilst  braggart  boors,  wavering  'twixt  rage  and  fear, 

Slave  hearths  lay  waste,  and  Indian  huts  surprise, 

And  swift  the  Martyr's  gibbet  would  uprear: 

Thou  hail'dst  him  great  whose  valorous  emprise 

Orion's  blazing  belt  dimmed  in  the  sky,  — 

Then  bowed  thy  unrepining  head  to  die. 

A.  BRONSON  ALCOTT. 
CONCORD,  January,  1882  > 


213373 


PKEFACE 


WHEN,  in  1879, 1  was  asked  by  my  friend 
Charles  Dudley  Warner  to  write  the  bio 
graphy  of  Thoreau  which  follows,  I  was  by 
no  means  unprepared.  I  had  known  this 
man  of  genius  for  the  last  seven  years  of  his 
too  short  life ;  had  lived  in  his  family,  and 
in  the  house  of  his  neighbor  across  the  way, 
Ellery  Channing,  his  most  intimate  friend 
outside  of  that  family ;  and  had  assisted 
Channing  in  the  preparation  and  publication 
of  his  "  Thoreau,  the  Poet-Naturalist," —  the 
first  full  biography  which  appeared.  Not 
very  long  after  Thoreau's  death  Channing 
had  written  me  these  sentences,  with  that  in 
sight  of  the  future  which  he  often  displayed : 

"  That  justice  can  be  done  to  our  deceased 
brother  by  me,  of  course  I  do  not  think.  But  to 
you  and  to  me  is  intrusted  the  care  of  his  imme 
diate  fame.  I  feel  that  my  part  is  not  yet  done, 
and  cannot  be  without  your  aid.  My  little  sketch 
must  only  serve  as  a  note  and  advertisement  that 


viii  PREFACE. 

such  a  man  lived,  —  that  he  did  brave  work, 
which  must  yet  be  given  to  the  world.  In  the 
midst  of  all  the  cold  and  selfish  men  who  knew 
this  brave  and  devoted  scholar  and  genius,  why 
should  not  you  be  called  on  to  make  some  sacri 
fices,  even  if  it  be  to  publish  my  sketch  ?  " 

This  I  was  ready  to  do  in  1864 ;  and  it 
was  through  my  means  that  the  volume,  then 
much  enlarged  by  Channing,  was  published 
in  1873,  and  again,  with  additions  and  cor 
rections,  in  1902. 

I  had  also  the  great  advantage  of  hearing 
from  the  mother  and  sister  of  Henry  the  af 
fectionate  side  of  his  domestic  life,  —  which 
indeed  I  had  witnessed,  both  in  his  health 
and  in  his  long  mortal  illness.  From  Emer 
son,  who  had  a  clear  view  of  Thoreau's  in 
tellect  and  his  moral  nature,  I  derived  many 
useful  suggestions,  though  not  wholly  agree 
ing  with  him  in  some  of  his  opinions.  In 
March,  1878,  after  hearing  Emerson  read  a 
few  unpublished  notes  on  Thoreau,  made 
years  before,  I  called  on  him  one  evening, 
and  thus  entered  the  event  in  my  journal :  — 

"  I  was  shown  several  of  Thoreau's  early  pa 
pers  ;  one  a  commentary  on  Emerson's  '  Sphinx,' 
and  another  f.-om  his  own  translation  of  *  The 


PREFACE.  IX 

Seven  Against  Thebes,'  written  at  William  Em 
erson's  house  on  Staten  Island  in  1843.  Of  this 
episode  in  Thoreau's  life  (his  tutorship  for  six 
months  of  William  Emerson's  three  sons),  Emer 
son  told  me  that  his  brother  and  Henry  were  not 
men  that  could  get  along  together :  *  each  would 
think  whatever  the  other  did  was  out  of  place.' 
This  was  said  to  imply  that  Thoreau's  poem  '  The 
Departure '  could  not  have  been  written  on  his 
leaving  Castleton  in  Staten  Island.  I  had  shown 
Emerson  these  verses  (first  printed  by  me,  at 
Sophia  Thoreau's  wish,  in  the  Boston  <  Common 
wealth  '  of  1863),  whereupon  he  said:  — 

"  *  I  think  Thoreau  had  always  looked  forward 
to  authorship  as  his  work  in  life,  and  finding  that 
he  could  write  prose  well,  he  soon  gave  up  writing 
verse,  in  which  he  was  not  willing  to  be  patient 
enough  to  make  the  lines  smooth  and  flowing. 
These  verses  are  smoother  than  he  usually  wrote  ; 
but  I  have  now  no  recollection  of  seeing  them  be 
fore,  nor  of  any  circumstances  in  which  they  may 
have  been  written.'  Alluding  to  Judge  Hoar's 
marked  dislike  of  Thoreau,  Emerson  said, l  There 
was  no  bow  in  Henry ;  he  never  sought  to  please 
his  hearers  or  his  friends.'  Thomas  Cholmonde- 
ley,  the  nephew  of  Scott's  friend  Richard  Heber, 
meeting  Henry  at  dinner  at  Emerson's,  to  whom 
Cholmondeley  had  letters  in  1854,  and  expressing 
to  his  host  tlie  wish  to  see  more  of  him,  Emerson 


X  PREFACE. 

said  he  told  the  Englishman,  *  If  you  wish  to  see 
Thoreau,  go  and  board  at  his  mother's  house ;  she 
will  be  glad  to  take  you  in,  and  there  you  can  meet 
him  every  day.  He  did  so,'  added  Emerson, 
'  and  you  know  the  result.'  .  .  .  This  led  to  fur 
ther  mention  of  Mrs.  Thoreau,  who,  Emerson  said, 
'  was  a  person  of  sharp  and  malicious  wit,'  of 
whose  sayings  he  read  me  some  instances  from 
his  Journals.  Among  these  was  her  remark  to 
Mrs.  Emerson,  '  Henry  is  very  tolerant ' ;  add 
ing  '  Mr.  Emerson  has  been  talking  so  much  with 
Henry  that  he  has  learnt  Henry's  way  of  thinking 
and  talking.'  Emerson  went  on  to  me :  — 

"  <  I  had  known  Henry  slightly  when  in  college ; 
the  scholarship  from  which  he  drew  an  income 
while  there  (a  farm  at  Pullen  Point  in  Chelsea) 
was  the  one  that  I  and  my  brothers,  William  and 
Edward,  had  enjoyed  while  we  were  at  college. 
But  my  first  intimate  acquaintance  with  Henry 
began  after  his  graduation  in  1837.  Mrs.  Brown, 
my  wife's  sister,  who  then  boarded  with  the  Tho 
reau  family  in  the  Parkman  house,  where  the  Li 
brary  now  stands,  used  to  bring  me  his  verses 
(the  "  Sic  Vita  "  and  others),  and  tell  me  of  his 
entries  in  his  Journal.  Here  is  the  Index  to  my 
Journals,  in  which  Thoreau's  name  appears  per 
haps  fifty  times,  perhaps  more.' " 

Thus  far  my  Journal  of  1878. 


PREFACE.  XI 

I  was  myself  introduced  to  Thoreau  by 
Emerson,  March  28,  1855,  in  the  Concord 
Town  Hall,  one  evening,  just  before  a  lecture 
there  by  Emerson.  From  that  time  until 
Henry's  death,  May  6,  1862,  I  saw  him 
every  few  days,  unless  he  or  I  was  away  from 
Concord,  and  for  more  than  two  years  I  dined 
with  him  daily  at  his  mother's  table,  in  the 
house  opposite  to  Ellery  Channing's.  I  thus 
came  to  know  all  the  surviving  members  of 
his  kindred,  —  his  eccentric  uncle,  Charles 
Dunbar,  his  two  aunts  on  each  side,  Jane 
and  Maria  Thoreau,  and  Louisa  and  Sophia 
Dunbar  (both  older  than  Mrs.  Thoreau),  and 
the  descendants  in  Maine  of  his  aunt  Mrs. 
Billings,  long  since  dead.  His  sister  Helen 
and  his  brother  John  I  never  knew,  but 
learned  much  about  them  from  their  mother 
and  sister  ;  for  neither  Henry  nor  his  father 
often  spoke  of  them.  Sophia  also  placed  in 
my  hands  after  Henry's  death  several  of  his 
poems,  which  I  printed  in  the  "  Common 
wealth,"  and  Emerson  gave  me  other  manu 
scripts  of  Thoreau  which  had  lodged  with 
him  while  he  was  editing  the  "  Dial."  He 
had  urged  Sophia  to  leave  all  the  MSS.  with 
me,  but  her  pique  against  Channing  at  the 


Xll  PREFACE. 

time  prevented  this,  —  she  knowing  him  to 
be  intimate  with  me. 

With  all  this  preparation,  I  received  from 
Mr.  Blake,  to  whom  Sophia  had  bequeathed 
them  in  1876,  the  correspondence  of  Thoreau 
and  his  college  essays,  with  some  other  pa 
pers  of  Henry's  and  his  own,  but  without  the 
replies  from  the  family  to  Henry's  affection 
ate  letters.  Even  his  own  to  his  mother  and 
sisters  had  been  withheld  from  publication 
by  Emerson  in  1865,  when  a  small  collection 
of  Thoreau's  Letters  and  Poems  was  edited 
by  Emerson.  This  omission  Sophia  regret 
ted,  as  she  told  me  ;  and  finding  them  now  in 
my  hands,  though  I  made  use  of  their  con 
tents  in  writing  the  biography,  I  withheld 
them  from  full  publication,  foreseeing  that  I 
should  probably  have  occasion  to  edit  the 
letters  in  full  at  some  later  time  ;  and  I  made 
but  sparing  use  of  the  early  essays. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  perceived  that  the 
character  and  genius  of  Thoreau  could  not  be 
well  understood  unless  some  knowledge  was 
had  of  the  Conaord  farmers,  scholars,  and  citi 
zens,  among  whom  he  had  spent  his  days,  and 
who  have  furnished  a  background  for  that 
scene  of  authorship  which  the  small  town  of 


PREFACE.  Xlll 

Concord  has  presented  for  now  more  than  sev 
enty  years.  Therefore,  having  access  to  the  re 
cords  and  biographies  of  the  Concord  "  Social 
Circle,"  then  in  preparation  for  the  public, 
and  to  many  other  records  of  the  past  in  New 
England,  I  sketched  therefrom  the  character 
of  our  interesting  community,  which  gave 
color  and  tone  to  the  outlines  of  this  thought 
ful  scholar's  career.  But  I  held  back  for  the 
"  Familiar  Letters"  the  more  intimate  details 
of  Thoreau's  self-devoted  life,  and  did  not 
draw  heavily  on  the  thirty-odd  volumes  of 
the  Journals,  to  which,  at  Worcester,  Mr. 
Blake  gave  me  free  access.  It  was  then  his 
purpose  to  bring  out  these  Journals  much 
earlier  and  more  fully  than  was  done,  until 
Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  published 
their  admirable  edition  in  fourteen  volumes, 
a  few  years  ago,  after  Mr.  Blake's  death. 

The  success  of  my  biography,  written  un 
der  these  limitations,  has  more  than  justified 
reasonable  expectations.  It  was  popular 
from  the  first,  and  is  still  widely  read,  and 
called  for  by  a  generation  of  readers  quite 
distinct  from  those  for  whom  it  was  originally 
written.  Since  the  spring  of  1882,  when  it 
published,  many  details  of  Thoreau's  life 


XIV  PREFACE. 

and  that  of  his  ancestors  have  become  known 
by  an  examination  of  his  copious  manuscripts, 
of  the  papers  of  his  Loyalist  ancestors,  and 
his  father's  relatives  in  the  island  of  Jersey ; 
and  by  the  publication  of  some  twenty-five 
volumes  from  Thoreau's  own  hand.  He 
never  employed  an  amanuensis,  and  he  seems 
to  have  carefully  preserved  the  large  mass  of 
his  manuscripts  which  accumulated  during 
his  literary  life  of  some  twenty-five  years. 
The  exceptions  to  this  remark  were  the  cop 
ies  of  his  earlier  verses,  which  he  told  me,  in 
his  last  illness,  he  had  destroyed,  because 
they  did  not  meet  Emerson's  approval,  and 
those  pages  of  his  Journals  which  he  had 
issued  in  printed  books  or  magazine  articles. 
Fragments  of  his  youthful  verses  were  kept, 
however,  by  some  of  his  family,  and  still 
exist.  From  all  these  sources  many  things 
have  come  to  light  concerning  his  ancestry 
and  the  minor  events  of  his  life,  which  I  hope 
eventually  to  give  the  world  in  a  final  bio 
graphy  that  will  serve  as  a  sequel  to  this  one. 
The  greatly  enhanced  reputation  which  Tho- 
reau  now  enjoys,  as  compared  with  his  fame 
in  1882,  seems  to  warrant  a  detail  which  was 
not  then  needful,  and  which  even  the  "Famil- 


PREFACE.  XV 

iar  Letters  "  does  not  furnish.  Much  mis 
conception  of  his  character  and  the  facts  of 
his  life  still  prevails ;  and  singular  statements 
have  been  made  in  text-books,  as  to  his  origin 
and  training.  One  authority  described  Tho- 
reau  as  descended  from  "  farmer  folk "  in 
Connecticut,  who  were  recent  immigrants 
from  France.  So  far  as  I  know,  not  a  single 
ancestor  of  his  ever  dwelt  in  Connecticut ; 
they  were  all  merchants ;  and  though  his 
Thoreau  ancestors  spoke  French,  or  a  patois 
of  it,  in  Jersey,  there  is  no  evidence  that  any 
of  them  had  lived  in  France  for  more  than 
five  centuries. 

This  initial  authentic  biography,  with  its 
few  errors  corrected,  now  comes  forth  in  a 
new  edition,  which  will  long  be  found  useful, 
in  the  manner  indicated,  and  I  hope,  may  be 
received  as  the  earlier  edition  has  been,  with 
all  the  favor  which  its  modest  aim  deserves. 

F.  B.  S. 

Concord,  Mass.,  October  8, 1909. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I.  Page 

BIRTH  AND  FAMILY l 

CHAPTER  II. 
CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH 32 

CHAPTER  III. 
CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE 63 

CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS 97 

CHAPTER  V. 
THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD 124 

CHAPTER  VI. 
EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP 148 

CHAPTER  VII. 
FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS  ...    * 174 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  WALDEN  HERMITAGE 201 


XV111-  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 
HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MJSCENAS 216 

CHAPTER  X. 
IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD 242 

CHAPTER  XL 
PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE    .    .    .    .    .261 

CHAPTER  XII. 
POET,  MORALIST,  AND  PHILOSOPHER 284 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY 297 


HENEY  D.  THOEEATJ. 


CHAPTER  I. 

BIRTH  AND  FAMILY. 

THERE  died  in  a  city  of  Maine,  on  the 
river  Penobscot,  late  in  the  year  1881,  the 
last  member  of  a  family  which  had  been 
planted  in  New  England  a  little  more  than 
a  hundred  years  before,  by  a  young  trades 
man  from  the  English  island  of  Jersey,  and 
had  here  produced  one  of  the  most  charac 
teristic  American  and  New  English  men  of 
genius  whom  the  world  has  yet  seen.  This 
lady,  Miss  Maria  Thoreau,  was  the  last 
child  of  John  Thoreau,  the  son  of  Philip 
Thoreau  and  his  wife,  Marie  le  Galais,  who, 
a  hundred  years  ago,  lived  in  the  parish  of 
St.  Helier,  in  Jersey.  This  John  Thoreau 
was  born  in  that  parish,  and  baptized  there 
in  the  Anglican  church,  in  April,  1754 ;  he 
emigrated  to  New  England  about  1773, 


2  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

and  in  1781  married  in  Boston  Miss  Jane 
Burns,  the  daughter  of  a  Scotchman  of 
some  estate  in  the  neighborhood  of  Stirling 
Castle,  who  had  emigrated  earlier  to  Mas 
sachusetts,  and  had  here  married  Sarah 
Orrok,  the  daughter  of  David  Orrok,  a  Mas 
sachusetts  Quaker.  Jane  (Burns)  Thoreau, 
the  granddaughter  of  David  Orrok,  and  the 
grandmother  of  Henry  David  Thoreau,  died 
in  Boston,  in  1796,  at  the  age  of  forty-two. 
Her  husband,  John  Thoreau,  Sr.,  removed 
from  Boston  to  Concord,  in  1800,  lived  in  a 
house  on  the  village  square,  and  died  there 
in  1801,  His  mother,  Marie  le  Galais,  out 
lived  him  a  few  weeks,  dying  at  St.  Helier, 
in  1801.  Maria  Thoreau,  granddaughter 
and  namesake  of  Marie  le  Galais,  died  in 
December,  1881,  in  Bangor,  Maine. 

From  the  recollections  of  this  "aunt 
Maria,"  who  outlived  all  her  American  rel 
atives  by  the  name  of  Thoreau,  Henry 
Thoreau  derived  what  information  he  pos 
sessed  concerning  his  Jersey  ancestors.  In 
his  journal  for  April  21,  1855,  he  makes 
this  entry : — 

"  Aunt  Maria  has  put  into  my  hands  to-day 
for  safe-keeping  three  letters  from  Peter  Thoreau 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  3 

(her  uncle),  directed  to  '  Miss  Elizabeth  Thoreau, 
Concord,  near  Boston/  and  dated  at  Jersey,  re 
spectively,  July  1,  1801,  April  22,  1804,  and 
April  11,  1806;  also  a  « Vue  de  la  mile  de  St. 
HelierJ  accompanying  the  first  letter.  The  first 
is  in  answer  to  one  from  my  aunt  Elizabeth,  an 
nouncing  the  death  of  her  father  (my  grandfa 
ther).  He  states  that  his  mother  (Marie  (le  Ga- 
lais)  Thoreau)  died  June  26, 1801,  the  day  before 
he  received  aunt  Elizabeth's  letter,  though  not 
till  after  he  had  heard  from  another  source  of 
the  death  of  his  brother,  which  was  not  commu 
nicated  to  his  mother.  *  She  was  in  the  seventy- 
ninth  year  of  her  age,'  he  says, '  and  retained  her 
memory  to  the  last.  She  lived  with  my  two  sis 
ters,  who  took  the  greatest  care  of  her.'  He 
says  that  he  had  written  to  my  grandfather  about 
his  oldest  brother  (who  died  about  a  year  be 
fore),  but  had  got  no  answer, —  had  written  that 
he  left  his  children,  two  sons  and  a  daughter,  in 
a  good  way :  *  The  eldest  son  and  daughter  are 
both  married  and  have  children  ;  the  youngest  is 
about  eighteen.  I  am  still  a  widower.  Of  four 
children  I  have  but  two  left,  —  Betsey  and  Pe 
ter;  James  and  Nancy  are  both  at  rest.'  He 
adds  that  he  sends  *  a  view  of  our  native  town.' 

"  The  second  of  these  letters  is  sent  by  the 
hand  of  Captain  John  Harvey,  of  Boston,  then  at 
Guernsey.  On  the  4th  of  February,  1804,  he 


4  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

had  sent  aunt  Elizabeth  a  copy  of  the  last  letter 
he  had  written  (which  was  in  answer  to  her  sec 
ond),  since  he  feared  she  had  not  received  it., 
He  says  that  they  are  still  at  war  with  the  French  ; 
that  they  received  the  day  before  a  letter  from 
her  '  uncle  and  aunt  Le  Cappelain  of  London  ; ' 
complains  of  not  receiving  letters,  and  says, '  Your 
aunts,  Betsey  and  Peter  join  with  me,'  etc.  Ac 
cording  to  the  third  letter  (April  11,  1806),  he 
had  received  by  Capt.  Touzel  an  answer  to  that 
he  sent  by  Capt.  Harvey,  and  will  forward  this 
by  the  former,  who  is  going  via  Newfoundland 
to  Boston.  '  He  expects  to  go  there  every  year  ; 
several  vessels  from  Jersey  go  there  every  year.' 
His  nephew  had  told  him,  some  time  before,  that 
he  met  a  gentleman  from  Boston,  who  told  him 
he  saw  the  sign  *  Thoreau  and  Hayse '  there,  and 
he  therefore  thinks  the  children  must  have  kept 
up  the  name  of  the  firm.  '  Your  cousin  John  is  a 
lieutenant  in  the  British  service ;  he  has  already 
been  in  a  campaign  on  the  Continent ;  he  is  very 
fond  of  it.'  Aunt  Maria  thinks  the  correspond 
ence  ceased  at  Peter's  death,  because  he  was  the 
one  who  wrote  English." 

These  memoranda  indicate  that  the  grand 
father  of  Henry  Thoreau  was  the  younger 
son  of  a  family  of  some  substance  in  Jer 
sey,  which  had  a  branch  in  London  and  a 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  5 

grandson  in  the  army  that  fought  under 
Wellington  against  Napoleon ;  that  the 
American  Thoreau  engaged  in  trade  in 
Boston,  with  a  partner,  and  carried  on  busi 
ness  successfully  for  years ;  and  that  there 
was  the  same  pleasant  family  feeling  in  the 
English  and  French  Thoreaus  that  we  shall 
see  in  their  American  descendants.  Miss 
Maria  Thoreau,  in  answer  to  a  letter  of 
mine,  some  years  ago,  sent  me  the  follow 
ing  particulars  of  her  ancestry,  some  of 
which  repeat  what  is  above  stated  by  her 
nephew :  — 

"BANGOR,  March  18,  1878. 
"  MR.  SANBORN. 

"  Dear  Sir,  —  In  answer  to  your  letter,  I 
regret  that  I  cannot  find  more  to  communicate. 
I  have  no  earlier  record  of  my  grandparents, 
Philippe  Thoreau  and  Marie  Le  Gallais,  than 
a  certificate  of  their  baptism  in  St.  Helier,  Jer 
sey,  written  on  parchment  in  the  year  1773. 
I  do  not  know  what  their  vocation  was.  My 
Father  was  born  in  St.  Helier  in  April,  1754, 
and  was  married  to  Jane  Burns  in  Boston,  in 
1781.  She  died  in  that  city  in  the  year  1796, 
aged  forty-two  years.  My  sister  Elizabeth  con 
tinued  my  Father's  correspondence  with  his 
brother,  Uncle  Peter  Thoreau,  at  St.  Helier,  for 


6  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

a  number  of  years  after  Father's  decease,  and  in 
one  of  his  letters  he  speaks  of  the  death  of  grand 
mother,  Marie  Le  Gallais,  as  taken  place  so  near 
the  time  intelligence  reach'd  them  of  Father's 
death,  in  1801,  it  was  not  communicated  to  her. 
Father  removed  to  Concord  in  1800,  and  died 
there,  of  consumption.  I  do  not  know  at  what 
time  he  emigrated  to  this  country,  but  have  been 
told  he  was  shipwreck'd  on  the  passage,  and  suf 
fered  much.  I  think  he  must  have  left  a  large 
family  circle,  as  Uncle  Peter  in  his  letters  refers 
to  aunts  and  cousins,  two  of  which,  aunts  Le  Cap- 
pelain  and  Pinkney,  resided  in  London,  and  a 
cousin,  John  Thoreau,  was  an  officer  in  the  Brit 
ish  army. 

"  Soon  after  Father's  arrival  in  Boston,  prob 
ably,  he  open'd  a  store  on  Long  Wharf,  as  docu 
ments  addressed  to  'John  Thoreau,  merchant,' 
appear  to  signify,  and  one  subsequently  pur 
chased  *  on  King  Street,  afterward  called  State 
Street.'  And  now  I  will  remark  in  passing  that 
Henry's  father  was  bred  to  the  mercantile  line, 
and  continued  in  it  till  failure  in  business ;  when 
he  resorted  to  pencil-making,  and  succeeded  so 
well  as  to  obtain  the  first  medal  at  the  Salem 
Mechanics'  Fair.  I  think  Henry  could  hardly 
compete  with  his  father  in  pencil-making,  any 
more  than  he,  with  his  peculiar  genius  and  hab 
its,  would  have  been  willing  to  spend  much  time 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY  1 

in  such  '  craft.'  His  father  left  no  will,  but  a 
competency,  at  least,  to  his  family,  and  what 
was  done  relative  to  the  business  after  his  death 
was  accomplished  by  his  daughter  Sophia.  I 
mention  this  to  rectify  Mr.  Page's  mistake  relat 
ing  to  Henry. 

"  And  now,  as  I  have  written  all  I  can  glean 
of  Father's  family,  I  will  turn  to  the  maternal 
side,  of  which  it  appears,  in  religious  belief,  they 
were  of  the  Quaker  persuasion.  But  I  was  sorry 
to  see,  by  good  old  great-great-grandfather  Til- 
let's  will,  that  slavery  was  tolerated  in  those  days 
in  the  good  State  of  Massachusetts,  and  handed 
down  from  generation  to  generation.  My  great- 
grandmother  (Tillet)  married  David  Orrok ;  her 
daughter,  Sarah  Orrok,  married  Mr.  Burns,  a 
Scotch  gentleman.  At  what  time  he  came  to 
this  country,  or  married,  I  cannot  ascertain, 
but  have  often  been  told,  to  gain  the  consent 
to  it  of  grandmother's  Quaker  parents,  he  was 
obliged  to  doff  his  rich  apparel  of  gems  and  ruf 
fles,  and  conform  to  the  more  simple  garb  of  his 
Quaker  bride.  On  a  visit  to  his  home  in  Scot 
land  he  died,  in  what  year  is  not  mentioned. 
Before  my  father's  decease,  a  letter  was  received 
from  the  executor  of  grandfather's  estate,  dated 
Stirling,  informing  him  there  was  property  left 
to  Jane  Burns,  his  daughter  in  America,  *  well 
worth  coming  after.'  But  Father  was  too  much 


8  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

out  of  health  to  attend  to  the  getting  it ;  and  the 
letter,  subsequently  put  into  a  lawyer's  hands 
by  Brother,  then  the  only  heir,  was  lost. 

"It  has  been  said  I  inherit  more  of  the  traits 
of  my  foreign  ancestry  than  any  of  my  family,  — 
which  pleases  me.  Probably  the  vivacity  of  the 
French  and  the  superstition  of  the  Scotch  may 
somewhat  characterize  me,  —  which  it  is  to  be 
hop'd  the  experience  of  an  octogenarian  may 
suitably  modify.  But  this  is  nothing,  here  nor 
there.  And  now  that  I  have  written  all  that  is 
necessary,  and  perhaps  more,  I  will  close,  with 
kind  wishes  for  health  and  happiness.  Yours 
respectfully,  MARIA  THOREAU." 

It  would  be  hard  to  compress  more  fam 
ily  history  into  a  short  letter,  and  yet  leave 
it  so  sprightly  in  style  as  this.  Of  the  four 
children  of  Maria  Thoreau's  brother  John 
and  Cynthia  D  unbar,  —  John,  Helen,  Henry, 
and  Sophia,  —  the  two  eldest,  John  and 
Helen,  were  said  to  be  "  clear  Thoreau," 
and  the  others,  Henry  and  Sophia,  "  clear 
Dunbar ; "  though  in  fact  the  Thoreau 
traits  were  marked  in  Henry  also.  Let  us 
see,  then,  who  and  what  were  the  family  of 
Henry  Thoreau's  mother,  Cynthia  Dunbar, 
who  was  born  in  Keene,  N.  H.,  in  1787. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  Rev.  Asa  Dunbar, 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY,  9 

who  was  born  at  Bridgewater,  Mass.,  in 
1745 ;  graduated  at  Harvard  College  in 
1767  (a  classmate  of  Sir  Thomas  Bernard 
and  Increase  Sumner) ;  preached  for  a 
while  at  Bedford,  near  Concord,  in  1769, 
when  he  was  "a  young  candidate,  newly 
begun  to  preach  ; "  settled  in  Salem  in  1772  ; 
resigned  his  pastorate  in  1779;  and  re 
moved  to  Keene  just  at  the  close  of  the 
Revolution,  where  he  became  a  lawyer,  and 
died,  a  little  upwards  of  forty-two,  in  1787. 
He  married  before  1775,  Miss  Mary  Jones, 
the  daughter  of  Col.  Elisha  Jones,  of  Wes- 
ton,  a  man  of  wealth  and  influence  in  his 
town,  who  died  in  1776.  Mrs.  Mary 
(Jones)  Dunbar  long  outlived  the  husband 
of  her  youth ;  in  middle  life  she  married 
a  Concord  farmer,  Jonas  Minott,  whom  she 
also  outlived ;  and  it  was  in  his  house  that 
her  famous  grandson  was  born  in  July, 
1817.  Mrs.  Minott  was  left  a  widow  for 
the  second  time  in  1813,  when  she  was 
sixty-five  years  old,  and  in  1815  she  sent  a 
petition  to  the  Grand  Lodge  of  Masons  in 
Massachusetts,  which  was  drawn  up  and 
indorsed  by  her  pastor,  Dr.  Ripley,  of  Con 
cord,  and  which  contains  a  short  sketch 


10  HENRY  D.    TH  ORE  ALT. 

of  Henry  Thoreau's  maternal  grandfather, 
from  whom  he  is  said  to  have  inherited 
many  qualities.  Mrs.  Minott's  petition  sets 
forth  "  that  her  first  husband,  Asa  D  unbar, 
Esq.,  late  of  Keene,  N.  H.,  was  a  native 
of  Massachusetts ;  that  he  was  for  a  number 
of  years  settled  in  the  gospel  ministry  at 
Salem ;  that  afterwards  he  was  a  counselor- 
at-law ;  that  he  was  Master  of  a  Lodge  of 
Free  and  Accepted  Masons  at  Keene,  where 
he  died ;  that  in  the  cause  of  Masonry  he 
was  interested  and  active;  that  through 
some  defection  or  misfortune  of  that  Lodge 
she  has  suffered  loss,  both  on  account  of 
what  was  due  to  him  and  to  her,  at  whose 
house  they  held  their  meetings ;  that  in  the 
settlement  of  the  estate  of  her  late  husband, 
Jonas  Minott,  Esq.,  late  of  Concord,  she 
has  been  peculiarly  unfortunate,  and  be 
come  very  much  straitened  in  the  means  of 
living  comfortably ;  that  being  thus  re 
duced,  and  feeling  the  weight  of  cares,  of 
years,  and  of  widowhood  to  be  very  heavy, 
after  having  seen  better  days,  she  is  in 
duced,  by  the  advice  of  friends,  as  well  as 
her  own  exigencies,  to  apply  for  aid  to 
the  benevolence  and  charity  of  the  Masonic 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  11 

fraternity."  At  the  house  of  this  decayed 
gentlewoman,  about  two  years  after  the 
date  of  this  petition,  Henry  Thoreau  was 
born.  She  lived  to  see  him  running  about, 
a  sprightly  boy,  and  he  remembered  her 
with  affection.  One  of  his  earliest  recol 
lections  of  Concord  was  of  driving  in  a 
chaise  with  his  grandmother  along  the 
shore  of  Walden  Pond,  perhaps  on  the  way 
to  visit  her  relatives  in  Weston,  and  think 
ing,  as  he  said  afterward,  that  he  should 
like  to  live  there. 

Ellery  Channing,  whose  life  of  his  friend 
Henry  is  a  mine  of  curious  information  on 
a  thousand  topics,  relevant  and  irrelevant, 
and  who  often  traversed  the  "  old  Virginia 
road"  with  Thoreau  before  the  house  in 
which  he  was  born  was  removed  from  its 
green  knoll  to  a  spot  further  east,  where 
it  now  stands,  thus  pictures  the  brown 
farm-house  and  its  surroundings  :  "  It  was 
a  perfect  piece  of  our  old  New  England 
style  of  building,  with  its  gray,  unpainted 
boards,  its  grassy,  unfenced  door-yard.  The 
house  is  somewhat  isolate  and  remote  from 
thoroughfares ;  on  the  Virginia  road,  an 
old-fashioned,  winding,  at  length  deserted 


12  HE  NET  D.   THOREAU. 

pathway,  the  more  smiling  for  its  forked 
orchards,  tumbling  walls,  and  mossy  banks. 
About  it  are  pleasant  sunny  meadows,  deep 
with  their  beds  of  peat,  so  cheering  with  its 
homely,  hearth-like  fragrance ;  and  in  front 
runs  a  constant  stream  through  the  centre 
of  that  great  tract  sometimes  called  '  Bed 
ford  levels,'  —  the  brook  a  source  of  the 
Shawsheen  River."  (This  is  a  branch  of 
the  Merrimac,  as  Concord  River  is,  but 
flows  into  the  main  stream  through  Ando- 
ver,  and  not  through  Billerica  and  Lowell, 
as  the  Concord  does.)  The  road  on  which 
it  stands,  a  mile  and  a  half  east  of  the 
Fitchburg  railroad  station,  and  perhaps  a 
mile  from  Thoreau's  grave  in  the  village 
cemetery,  is  a  by-path  from  Concord  to 
Lexington,  through  the  little  town  of  Bed 
ford.  The  farm-house,  with  its  fields  and 
orchard,  was  a  part  of  Mrs.  Minott's  "  wid 
ow's  thirds,"  on  which  she  was  living  at 
the  date  of  her  grandson's  birth  (July  12, 
1817),  and  which  her  son-in-law,  John 
Thoreau,  was  "  carrying  on  "  for  her  that 
year. 

Mrs.  Minott,  a  few  years  before  Dr.  Rip- 
ley's  petition  in  her  behalf,  came  near  hav- 


BIRTH  AND   FAMILY.  13 

ing  a  more  distinguished  son-in-law,  Daniel 
Webster,  who,  like  the  young  Dunbars,  was 
New  Hampshire  born,  and  a  year  or  two 
older  than  Mrs.  Minott's  daughter,  Louisa 
Dunbar.  He  had  passed  through  Dart 
mouth  College  a  little  in  love  with  two  or 
three  of  the  young  ladies  of  Hanover,  and 
had  returned  to  his  native  town  of  Salis 
bury,  N.  H.,  when  he  met  in  Boscawen, 
near  by,  Miss  Louisa,  who,  like  Miss  Grace 
Fletcher,  whom  he  married  a  few  years 
afterward,  was  teaching  school  in  one  of  the 
New  Hampshire  towns.  Miss  Dunbar  made 
an  impression  on  Webster's  heart,  always 
susceptible,  and,  had  the  fates  been  propi 
tious,  he  might  have  called  Henry  Thoreau 
nephew  in  after  years;  but  the  silken  tie 
was  broken  before  it  was  fairly  knit.  I  sus 
pect  that  she  was  the  person  referred  to  by 
one  of  Webster's  biographers,  who  says, 
speaking  of  an  incident  that  occurred  in 
January,  1805:  "Mr.  Webster,  at  that  time, 
had  no  thought  of  marrying;  he  had  not 
even  met  the  lady  who  afterward  became 
his  wife.  He  had  been  somewhat  interested 
in  another  lady,  who  is  occasionally  referred 
to  in  his  letters,  written  after  he  left  col- 


14  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

lege,  but  who  was  not  either  of  those  whom 
he  had  known  at  Hanover.  But  this  affair 
never  proceeded  very  far,  and  he  had  en 
tirely  dismissed  it  from  his  mind  before  he 
went  to  Boston  in  1804."  In  January,  1806, 
about  the  time  of  his  father's  death,  Web 
ster  wrote  to  a  college  friend,  "I  am  not 
married,  and  seriously  am  inclined  to  think 
I  never  shall  be,"  though  he  was  then  a 
humble  suitor  to  Grace  Fletcher. 

Louisa  D  unbar  was  a  lively,  dark-haired, 
large-eyed,  pleasing  young  lady,  who  had 
perhaps  been  educated  in  part  at  Boscawen, 
where  Webster  studied  for  college,  and  af 
terwards  was  a  school-teacher  there.  She 
received  from  him  those  attentions  which 
young  men  give  to  young  ladies  without 
any  very  active  thoughts  of  marriage ;  but 
he  at  one  time  paid  special  attentions  to 
her,  which  might  have  led  to  matrimony, 
perhaps,  if  Webster  had  not  soon  after  fal 
len  under  the  sway  of  a  more  fascinating 
school-teacher,  Miss  Grace  Fletcher,  of  Hop- 
kinton,  N.  H.,  whom  he  first  saw  at  the 
door  of  her  little  school-house  in  Salisbury, 
not  far  from  his  own  birthplace.  A  Con 
cord  matron,  a  neighbor  and  friend  of  the 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  15 

Dunbars  and  Thoreaus,  heard  the  romantic 
story  from  Webster's  own  lips  forty  years 
afterward,  as  she  was  driving  with  him 
through  the  valley  of  the  Assabet :  how  he 
was  traveling  along  a  New  Hampshire  road 
in  1805,  stopped  at  a  school-house  to  ask 
a  question  or  leave  a  message,  and  was 
met  at  the  door  by  that  vision  of  beauty 
and  sweetness,  Grace  Fletcher  herself,  to 
whom  he  yielded  his  heart  at  once.  From 
a  letter  of  Webster's  to  this  Concord  friend 
(Mrs.  Louisa  Cheney)  I  quote  this  descrip 
tion  of  his  native  region,  which  has  never 
been  printed :  — 

"FRANKLIN,  N.  H.,  September  29,  '45. 

"DEAR  MRS.  CHENEY,  —  You  are  hardly  ex 
pecting  to  hear  from  me  in  this  remote  region  of 
the  earth.  Where  I  am  was  originally  a  part  of 
Salisbury,  the  place  of  my  birth ;  and,  having 
continued  to  own  my  father's  farm,  I  sometimes 
make  a  visit  to  this  region.  The  house  is  on  the 
west  bank  of  Merrimac  River,  fifteen  miles 
above  Concord  (N.  H.),  in  a  pleasant  valley, 
made  rather  large  by  a  turn  in  the  stream,  and 
surrounded  by  high  and  wooded  hills.  I  came 
here  five  or  six  days  ago,  alone,  to  try  the  effect 
of  the  mountain  air  upon  my  health. 

"  This  is  a  very  picturesque  country.    The  hills 


16  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

are  high,  numerous,  and  irregular,  —  some  with 
wooded  summits,  and  some  with  rocky  heads  as 
white  as  snow.  I  went  into  a  pasture  of  mine 
last  week,  lying  high  up  on  one  of  the  hills,  and 
had  there  a  clear  view  of  the  White  Mountains 
in  the  northeast,  and  of  Ascutney,  in  Vermont, 
back  of  Windsor,  in  the  west ;  while  within  these 
extreme  points  was  a  visible  scene  of  mountains 
and  dales,  lakes  and  streams,  farms  and  forests. 
I  really  think  this  region  is  the  true  Switzerland 
of  the  United  States. 

"  I  am  attracted  to  this  particular  spot  by  very 
strong  feelings.  It  is  the  scene  of  my  early 
years ;  and  it  is  thought,  and  I  believe  truly, 
that  these  scenes  come  back  upon  us  with  re 
newed  interest  and  more  strength  of  feeling  as 
we  find  years  running  over  us.  White  stones, 
visible  from  the  window,  and  close  by,  mark  the 
grave  of  my  father,  my  mother,  one  brother,  and 
three  sisters.  Here  are  the  same  fields,  the  same 
hills,  the  same  beautiful  river,  as  in  the  days  of 
my  childhood.  The  human  beings  which  knew 
them  now  know  them  no  more.  Few  are  left 
with  whom  I  shared  either  toil  or  amusement  in 
the  days  of  youth.  But  this  is  melancholy  and 
personal,  and  enough  of  it.  One  mind  cannot 
enter  fully  into  the  feelings  of  another  in  regard 
to  the  past,  whether  those  feelings  be  joyous  or 
melancholy,  or,  which  is  more  commonly  the  case, 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  17 

partly  both.     I  am,   dear  Mrs.   Cheney,  yours 
truly,  DANIEL  WEBSTER." 

No  doubt  the  old  statesman  was  think 
ing,  as  he  wrote,  not  only  of  his  father, 
Captain  Ebenezer  Webster  ("  with  a  com 
plexion,"  said  Stark,  under  whom  he  fought 
at  Bennington,  u  that  burnt  gunpowder 
could  not  change  "),  of  his  mother  and  his 
brethren,  but  also  of  Grace  Fletcher,  —  and 
echoing  in  his  heart  the  verse  of  Words 
worth  :  — 

"  Among  thy  mountains  did  I  feel 

The  joy  of  my  desire  ; 
And  she  I  cherished  turned  her  wheel 

Beside  a  cottage  fire. 
Thy  mornings  showed,  thy  nights  concealed, 

The  bowers  where  Lucy  played ; 
And  thine,  too,  is  the  last  green  field 

That  Lucy's  eyes  surveyed." 

It  was  no  such  deep  sentiment  as  this  which 
Louisa  Dunbar  had  inspired  in  young  Web 
ster's  breast;  but  he  walked  and  talked 
with  her,  took  her  to  drive  in  his  chaise  up 
and  down  the  New  Hampshire  hills,  and 
no  doubt  went  with  her  to  church  and  to 
prayer-meeting.  She  once  surprised  me  by 
confiding  to  me  (as  we  were  talking  about 
Webster  in  the  room  where  Henry  Thoreau 
2 


* 


t 

18  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

afterwards  died,  and  where  there  hung 
then  an  engraving  by  Rowse  of  Webster's 
magnificent  head)  "  that  she  regarded  Mr. 
Webster,  under  Providence,  as  the  means 
of  her  conversion."  Upon  my  asking  how, 
she  said  that,  in  one  of  their  drives,  — per 
haps  in  the  spring  of  1804,  —  he  had  spoken 
to  her  so  seriously  and  scripturally  on  the 
subject  of  religion  that  her  conscience  was 
awakened,  and  she  soon  after  joined  the 
church,  of  which  she  continued  through  life 
a  devout  member.  Her  friendship  for  Mr. 
Webster  also  continued,  and  in  his  visits  to 
Concord,  which  were  frequent  from  1843  to 
1849,  he  generally  called  on  her,  or  she  was 
invited  to  meet  him  at  the  house  of  Mr. 
Cheney,  where,  among  social  and  political 
topics,  Webster  talked  with  her  of  the  old 
days  at  Boscawen  and  Salisbury. 

Cynthia  Dunbar,  the  mother  of  Henry 
Thoreau,  was  born  in  Keene,  N.  H.,  in 
1787,  the  year  that  her  father  died.  Her 
husband,  John  Thoreau,  who  was  a  few 
months  younger  than  herself,  was  born  in 
Boston.  When  Henry  Thoreau  first  vis 
ited  Keene,  in  1850,  he  made  this  re 
mark  :  "  Keene  Street  strikes  the  traveler 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  19 

favorably  ;  it  is  so  wide,  level,  straight, 
and  long.  I  have  heard  one  of  my  relatives 
who  was  born  and  bred  there  [Louisa 
Dunbar,  no  doubt]  say  that  you  could  see 
a  chicken  run  across  it  a  mile  off."  His 
mother  hardly  lived  there  long  enough  to 
notice  the  chickens  a  mile  off,  but  she  occa 
sionally  visited  her  native  town  after  her 
marriage  in  1812,  and  a  kinswoman  (Mrs. 
Laura  Dunbar  Ralston,  of  Washington,  D. 
C.),  now  living,  says,  "  I  recollect  Mrs. 
Thoreau  as  a  handsome,  high-spirited  wom 
an,  half  a  head  taller  than  her  husband, 
accomplished,  after  the  manner  of  those 
days,  with  a  voice  of  remarkable  power  and 
sweetness  in  singing."  She  was  fond  of 
dress,  and  had  a  weakness,  not  uncommon 
in  her  day,  for  ribbons,  which  her  austere 
friend,  Miss  Mary  Emerson  (aunt  of  R.  W. 
Emerson),  once  endeavored  to  rebuke  in  a 
manner  of  her  own.  In  1857,  when  Mrs. 
Thoreau  was  seventy  years  old,  and  Miss 
Emerson  eighty-four,  the  younger  lady 
called  on  the  elder  in  Concord,  wearing 
bonnet-ribbons  of  a  good  length  and  of  a 
bright  color,  —  perhaps  yellow.  During  the 
call,  in  which  Henry  Thoreau  was  the  sub- 


20  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ject  of  conversation,  Miss  Emerson  kept 
her  eyes  shut.  As  Mrs.  Thoreau  and  her 
daughter  Sophia  rose  to  go,  the  little  old 
lady  said,  "  Perhaps  you  noticed,  Mrs. 
Thoreau,  that  I  closed  my  eyes  during  your 
call.  I  did  so  because  I  did  not  wish  to 
look  on  the  ribbons  you  are  wearing,  so  un 
suitable  for  a  child  of  God  and  a  person  of 
your  years." 

In  uttering  this  reproof,  Miss  Emerson 
may  have  had  in  mind  the  clerical  father 
of  Mrs.  Thoreau,  Rev.  Asa  Dunbar,  whom 
she  was  old  enough  to  remember.  He  was 
settled  in  Salem  as  the  colleague  of  Rev. 
Thomas  Barnard,  after  a  long  contest  which 
led  to  the  separation  of  the  First  Church 
there,  and  the  formation  of  the  Salem 
North  Church  in  1772.  The  parishioners 
of  Mr.  Dunbar  declared  their  new  minister 
*' admirably  qualified  for  a  gospel  preacher," 
and  he  seems  to  have  proved  himself  a 
learned  and  competent  minister.  But  his 
health  was  infirm,  and  this  fact,  as  one 
authority  says,  "soon  threw  him  into  the 
profession  of  the  law,  which  he  honor 
ably  pursued  for  a  few  years  at  Keene." 
Whether  he  went  at  once  to  Keene  on  leav- 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  21 

ing  Salem  in  1779  does  not  appear,  but  he 
was  practicing  law  there  in  1783,  and  was 
also  a  leading  Freemason.  His  diary  for  a 
few  years  of  his  early  life  —  a  faint  fore 
shadowing  of  his  grandson's  copious  jour 
nals  —  is  still  in  existence,  and  indicates 
a  gay  and  genial  disposition,  such  as  Mrs. 
Thoreau  had.  His  only  son,  Charles  Dun- 
bar,  who  was  born  in  February,  1780,  and 
died  in  March,  1856,  inherited  this  gaiety 
of  heart,  but  also  that  lack  of  reverence 
and  discipline  which  is  proverbial  in  New 
England  for  "  ministers'  sons  and  deacons' 
daughters."  His  nephew  said  of  him,  uHe 
was  born  the  winter  of  the  great  snow,  and 
he  died  in  the  winter  of  another  great  snow, 
—  a  life  bounded  by  great  snows."  At  the 
time  of  Henry  Thoreau's  birth,  Mrs.  Tho- 
reau's  sisters,  Louisa  and  Sarah,  and  their 
brother  Charles  were  living  in  Concord,  or 
not  far  off,  and  there  Louisa  D unbar  died 
a  few  years  before  Mrs.  Thoreau.  Her 
brother  Charles,  who  was  two  years  older 
than  Daniel  Webster,  was  a  person  widely 
known  in  New  Hampshire  and  Massachu 
setts,  and  much  celebrated  by  Thoreau  in 
his  journals.  At  the  time  of  his  death,  J 


22  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

find  the  following  curious  entries,  in  Tho- 
reau's  journal  for  April  3,  1856 :  — 

"  People  are  talking  about  my  uncle  Charles. 
George  Minott  [a  sort  of  cousin  of  the  Thoreaus] 
tells  how  he  heard  Tilly  Brown  once  asking 
him  to  show  him  a  peculiar  inside  lock  in  wrest 
ling.  *  Now,  don't  hurt  me,  —  don't  throw 
me  hard.'  He  struck  his  antagonist  inside  his 
knees  with  his  feet,  and  so  deprived  him  of  his 
legs.  Edmund  Hosmer  remembers  his  tricks  in 
the  bar-room,  shuffling  cards,  etc. ;  he  could  do 
anything  with  cards,  yet  he  did  not  gamble.  He 
would  toss  up  his  hat,  twirling  it  over  and  over, 
and  catch  it  on  his  head  invariably.  He  once 
wanted  to  live  at  Hosmer's,  but  the  latter  was 
afraid  of  him.  '  Can't  we  study  up  something  ? ' 
he  asked.  Hosmer  asked  him  into  the  house, 
and  brought  out  apples  and  cider,  and  uncle 
Charles  talked.  <  You  ! '  said  he,  '  I  burst  the 
bully  of  Haverhill.'  He  wanted  to  wrestle, — 
would  not  be  put  off.  *  Well,  we  won't  wrestle 
in  the  house/  So  they  went  out  to  the  yard,  and 
a  crowd  got  round.  *  Come,  spread  some  straw 
here,'  said  uncle  Charles,  —  '  I  don't  want  to 
hurt  him/  He  threw  him  at  once.  They  tried 
again ;  he  told  them  to  spread  more  straw,  and 
he  ( burst '  him.  Uncle  Charles  used  to  say  that 
he  had  n't  a  single  tooth  in  his  head.  The  fact 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  23 

was  they  were  all  double,  and  I  have  heard  that 
he  lost  about  all  of  them  by  the  time  he  was 
twenty-one.  Ever  since  I  knew  him  he  could 
swallow  his  nose.  He  had  a  strong  head,  and 
never  got  drunk  ;  would  drink  gin  sometimes, 
but  not  to  excess.  Did  not  use  tobacco,  except 
snuff  out  of  another's  box,  sometimes ;  was  very 
neat  in  his  person ;  was  not  profane,  though  vul 
gar." 

This  was  the  uncle  who,  as  Thoreau  said 
in  "  Walden,"  "  goes  to  sleep  shaving  him 
self,  and  is  obliged  to  sprout  potatoes  in  a 
cellar  Sundays  in  order  to  keep  awake  and 
keep  the  Sabbath."  He  was  a  humorous, 
ne'er-do-weel  character,  who,  with  a  little 
property,  no  family,  and  no  special  regard 
for  his  reputation,  used  to  move  about 
from  place  to  place,  a  privileged  jester,  ath 
lete,  and  unprofessional  juggler.  One  of 
his  tricks  was  to  swallow  all  the  knives  and 
forks  and  some  of  the  plates  at  the  tavern 
table,  and  then  offer  to  restore  them  if  the 
landlord  would  forgive  him  the  bill.  I  re 
member  this  wortby  in  his  old  age,  an 
amusing  guest  at  his  brother-in-law's  table, 
where  his  nephew  plied  him  with  questions. 
We  shall  find  him  mentioned  again,  in  con- 


24  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

nection  with   Daniel  Webster's   friendship 
for  the  Dunbar  family. 

Thoreau's  mother  had  this  same  inces 
sant  and  rather  malicious  liveliness  that  in 
Charles  Dunbar  took  the  grotesque  form 
above  hinted  at.  She  was  a  kindly,  shrewd 
woman,  with  traditions  of  gentility  and  sen 
timents  of  generosity,  but  with  sharp  and 
sudden  flashes  of  gossip  and  malice,  which 
never  quite  amounted  to  ill-nature,  but 
greatly  provoked  the  prim  and  commonplace 
respectability  that  she  so  often  came  in 
contact  with.  Along  with  this  humorous 
quality  there  went  also  an  affectionate  ear 
nestness  in  her  relation  with  those  who  de 
pended  on  her,  that  could  not  fail  to  be 
respected  by  all  who  knew  the  hard  condi 
tions  that  New  England  life,  even  in  a  fa 
vored  village  like  Concord,  then  imposed 
on  the  mother  of  a  family,  where  the  out 
ward  circumstances  were  not  in  keeping 
with  the  inward  aspiration. 

"  Who  sings  the  praise  of  woman  in  our  clime  ? 
I  do  not  boast  her  beauty  or  her  grace  : 
Some  humble  duties  render  her  sublime, 
She,  the  sweet  nurse  of  this  New  England  race, 
The  flower  upon  the  country's  sterile  face ; 
The  mother  of  New  England's  sons,  the  pride 
Of  every  house  where  those  good  sons  abide." 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  25 

Her  husband  was  a  grave  and  silent,  but 
inwardly  cheerful  and  social  person,  who 
found  no  difficulty  in  giving  his  wife  the 
lead  in  all  affairs.  The  small  estate  he 
inherited  from  his  father,  the  first  John 
Thoreau,  was  lost  in  trade,  or  by  some 
youthful  indiscretions,  of  which  he  had  his 
quiet  share ;  and  he  then,  about  1823,  turned 
his  attention  to  pencil-making,  which  had 
by  that  time  become  a  lucrative  business  in 
Concord.  He  had  married  in  1812,  and  he 
died  in  1859.  He  was  a  small,  deaf,  and 
unobtrusive  man,  plainly  clad,  and  "  mind 
ing  his  own  business;"  very  much  in  con 
trast  with  his  wife,  who  was  one  of  the 
most  unceasing  talkers  ever  seen  in  Con 
cord.  Her  gift  in  speech  was  proverbial, 
and  wherever  she  was  the  conversation  fell 
largely  to  her  share.  She  fully  verified 
the  Oriental  legend,  which  accounts  for  the 
greater  loquacity  of  women  by  the  fact 
that  nine  baskets  of  talk  were  let  down  from 
heaven  to  Adam  and  Eve  in  their  garden, 
and  that  Eve  glided  forward  first  and  se 
cured  six  of  them.  Old  Dr.  Ripley,  a  few 
years  before  his  death,  wrote  a  letter  to  his 
son,  towards  the  end  of  which  he  said,  with 


26  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

courteous  reticence,  "  I  meant  to  have  filled 
a  page  with  sentiments.  But  a  kind  neigh' 
bor,  Mrs.  Thoreau,  has  been  here  more  than 
an  hour.  This  letter  must  go  in  the  mail 
to-day."  Her  conversation  generally  put  a 
stop  to  other  occupations ;  and  when  at  her 
table  Henry  Thoreau's  grave  talk  with  oth 
ers  was  interrupted  by  this  flow  of  speech 
at  the  other  end  of  the  board,  he  would 
pause,  and  wait  with  entire  and  courteous 
silence,  until  the  interruption  ceased,  and 
then  take  up  the  thread  of  his  own  dis 
course  where  he  had  dropped  it ;  bowing  to 
his  mother,  but  without  a  word  of  comment 
on  what  she  had  said. 

Dr.  Ripley  was  the  minister  of  Concord 
for  half  a  century,  and  in  his  copious  man 
uscripts,  still  preserved,  are  records  concern 
ing  his  parishioners  of  every  conceivable 
kind.  He  carefully  kept  even  the  smallest 
scrap  that  he  ever  wrote,  and  among  his  pa 
pers  I  once  found  a  fragment,  on  one  side  of 
which  was  written  a  pious  meditation,  and 
on  the  other  a  certificate  to  this  effect :  "  Un 
derstanding  that  Mr.  John  Thoreau,  now  of 
Chelmsford,  is  going  into  business  in  that 
place,  and  is  about  to  apply  for  license  to 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  27 

retail  ardent  spirits,  I  hereby  certify  that  I 
have  been  long  acquainted  with  him,  that 
he  has  sustained  a  good  character,  and  now 
view  him  as  a  man  of  integrity,  accustomed 
to  store-keeping,  and  of  correct  morals." 
There  is  no  date,  but  the  time  was  about 
1818.  Chelmsford  is  a  town  ten  miles  north 
of  Concord,  to  which  John  Thoreau  had  re 
moved  for  three  years,  in  the  infancy  of 
Henry.  From  Chelmsford  he  went  to  Bos 
ton  in  1821,  but  was  successful  in  neither 
place,  and  soon  returned  to  Concord,  where 
he  gave  up  trade  and  engaged  in  pencil- 
making,  as  already  mentioned. 

From  that  time,  about  1823,  till  his 
death  in  1859,  John  Thoreau  led  a  plod 
ding,  unambitious,  and  respectable  life  in 
Concord  village,  educating  his  children,  as 
sociating  with  his  neighbors  on  those  terms 
of  equality  for  which  Concord  is  famous, 
and  keeping  clear,  in  a  great  degree,  of  the 
quarrels,  social  and  political,  that  agitated 
the  village.  Mrs.  Thoreau,  on  the  other 
hand,  with  her  sister  Louisa  and  her  sisters- 
in-law,  Sarah,  Maria,  and  Jane  Thoreau, 
took  their  share  in  the  village  bickerings. 
In  1826,  when  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher,  then  of 


28  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

Boston,  Dr.  John  Todd,  then  of  Groton,  and 
other  Calvinistic  divines  succeeded  in  making 
a  schism  in  Dr.  Ripley's  parish,  and  draw 
ing  off  Trinitarians  enough  to  found  a  sepa 
rate  church,  the  Thoreaus  generally  seceded, 
along  with  good  old  Deacon  White,  whose 
loss  Dr.  Ripley  bewailed.  This  contention 
was  sharply  maintained  for  years,  and  was 
followed  by  the  antimasonic  and  antisla- 
very  agitation.  In  the  latter  Mrs.  Thoreau 
and  her  family  engaged  zealously,  and  their 
house  remained  for  years  headquarters  for 
the  early  abolitionists  and  a  place  of  refuge 
for  fugitive  slaves.  The  atmosphere  of 
earnest  purpose,  which  pervaded  the  great 
movement  for  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves,  gave  to  the  Thoreau  family  an  eleva 
tion  of  character  which  was  ever  afterward 
perceptible,  and  imparted  an  air  of  dignity 
to  the  trivial  details  of  life.  By  this  time, 
too,  —  I  speak  of  the  years  from  1836  on 
ward  till  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  war,  — 
the  children  of  Mrs.  Thoreau  had  reached 
an  age  and  an  education  which  made  them 
noteworthy  persons.  Helen,  the  oldest 
child,  born  in  1812,  was  an  accomplished 
teacher.  John,  the  elder  son,  born  in  1814 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  29 

was  one  of  those  lovely  and  sunny  natures 
which  infuse  affection  in  all  who  come 
within  their  range  ;  and  Henry,  with  his 
peculiar  strength  and  independence  of  soul, 
was  a  marked  personage  among  the  few 
who  would  give  themselves  the  trouble  to 
understand  him.  Sophia,  the  youngest 
child,  born  in  1819,  had,  along  with  her 
mother's  lively  and  dramatic  turn,  a  touch 
of  art ;  and  all  of  them,  whatever  their  ac 
cidental  position  for  the  time,  were  superior 
persons.  Living  in  a  town  where  the  an 
cient  forms  survived  in  daily  collision  or  in 
friendly  contact  with  the  new  ideas  that 
began  to  make  headway  in  New  England 
about  1830,  the  Thoreaus  had  peculiar  op 
portunities,  above  their  apparent  fortunes, 
but  not  beyond  their  easy  reach  of  capacity, 
for  meeting  on  equal  terms  the  advancing 
spirit  of  the  period. 

The  children  of  the  house,  as  they  grew 
up,  all  became  school-teachers,  and  each 
displayed  peculiar  gifts  in  that  profession. 
But  they  were  all  something  more  than 
teachers,  and  becoming  enlisted  early  in  the 
antislavery  cause,  or  in  that  broader  service 
of  humanity  which  "  plain  living  and  high 


30  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

thinking  "  imply,  they  gradually  withdrew 
from  that  occupation,  —  declining  the  op 
portunities  by  which  other  young  persons, 
situated  as  they  then  were,  rise  to  worldly 
success,  and  devoting  themselves,  within  lim 
its  somewhat  narrow,  to  the  pursuit  of  lofty 
ideals.  The  household  of  which  they  were 
loving  and  thoughtful  members  (let  one  be 
permitted  to  say  who  was  for  a  time  do 
mesticated  there)  had,  like  the  best  families' 
everywhere,  a  distinct  and  individual  exist 
ence,  in  which  each  person  counted  for 
something,  and  was  not  a  mere  drop  in  the 
broad  water-level  that  American  society 
tends  more  and  more  to  become.  To  meet 
one  of  the  Thoreaus  was  not  the  same  as  to 
encounter  any  other  person  who  might  hap 
pen  to  cross  your  path.  Life  to  them  was 
something  more  than  a  parade  of  preten 
sions,  a  conflict  of  ambitions,  or  an  inces 
sant  scramble  for  the  common  objects  of 
desire.  They  were  fond  of  climbing  to  the 
hill-top,  and  could  look  with  a  broader  and 
kindlier  vision  than  most  of  us  on  the  com 
motions  of  the  plain  and  the.; mists  of  the 
valley.  Without  wealth,  or  power,  or  social 
prominence,  they  still  held  a  rank  of  their 


BIRTH  AND  FAMILY.  31 

own,  in  scrupulous  independence,  and  with 
qualities  that  put  condescension  out  of  the 
question.  They  could  have  applied  to 
themselves,  individually,  and  without  hau 
teur,  the  motto  of  the  French  chevalier :  — 


"  Je  suis  ni  roi,  ni  prince  aussi, 
Je  suis  le  seigneur  de  Coucy." 

"  Nor  king,  nor  duke  ?    Your  pardon,  no ; 
I  am  the  master  of  Thoreau." 

They  lived  their  life  according  to  their 
genius,  without  the  fear  of  man  or  of  "  the 
world's  dread  laugh,"  saying  to  Fortune 
what  Tennyson  sings :  — 

"  Turn,  Fortune,  turn  thy  wheel  with  smile  or  frown, — 
With  that  wild  wheel  we  go  not  up  nor  down ; 
Our  hoard  is  little,  but  our  hearts  are  great. 
Smile,  and  we  smile,  the  lords  of  many  lands ; 
Frown,  and  we  smile,  the  lords  of  our  own  hands,  — 
For  man  is  man,  and  master  of  his  fate." 


CHAPTER   II. 

CHILDHOOD   AND  YOUTH. 

CONCORD,  the  Massachusetts  town  in 
which  Thoreau  was  born,  is  to  be  distin 
guished  from  the  newer  but  larger  town  of 
the  same  name  which  became  the  capital 
of  New  Hampshire  about  the  time  the  first 
American  Thoreau  made  his  appearance  in 
"  old  Concord."  The  latter,  the  first  inland 
plantation  of  the  Massachusetts  Colony,  was 
bought  of  the  Indians  by  Major  Willard,  a 
Kentish  man,  and  Rev.  Peter  Bulkeley,  a 
Puritan  clergyman  from  the  banks  of  the 
Ouse  in  Bedfordshire,  and  was  settled  un 
der  their  direction  in  1635.  Mr.  Bulkeley, 
from  whom  Mr.  Emerson  and  many  pf  the 
other  Concord  citizens  of  Thoreau's  day 
were  descended,  was  the  first  minister  of 
the  town,  which  then  included  the  present 
towns  of  Concord,  Acton,  Bedford,  Carlisle, 
and  Lincoln  ;  and  among  his  parishioners 
were  the  ancestors  of  the  principal  families 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  33 

that  now  inhabit  these  towns.  Concord  it 
self,  the  centre  of  this  large  tract,  was 
thought  eligible  for  settlement  because  of 
its  great  meadows  on  the  Musketaquid  or 
Meadow  River.  It  had  been  a  seat  of  the 
Massachusetts  Indians,  and  a  powerful  Sa 
chem,  Tahattawan,  lived  between  its  two 
rivers,  where  the  Assabet  falls  into  the 
slow-gliding  Musketaquid.  Thoreau,  the 
best  topographer  of  his  birthplace,  says  :  — 
"It  has  been  proposed  that  the  town  should 
adopt  for  its  coat  of  arms  a  field  verdant,  with  the 
Concord  circling  nine  times  round.  I  have  read 
that  a  descent  of  an  eighth  of  an  inch  in  a  mile  is 
sufficient  to  produce  a  flow.  Our  river  has  prob 
ably  very  near  the  smallest  allowance.  But 
wherever  it  makes  a  sudden  bend  it  is  shallower 
and  swifter,  and  asserts  its  title  to  be  called  a 
river.  For  the  most  part  it  creeps  through  broad 
meadows,  adorned  with  scattered  oaks,  where  the 
cranberry  is  found  in  abundance,  covering  the 
ground  like  a  mossbed.  A  row  of  sunken  dwarf 
willows  borders  the  stream  on  one  or  both  sides, 
while  at  a  greater  distance  the  meadow  is  skirted 
with  maples,  alders,  and  other  fluviatile  trees, 
overrun  with  the  grape-vine,  which  bears  fruit  in 
its  season,  purple,  red,  white,  and  other  grapes." 

From  these  river-grapes,  by  seedling  cul- 
3 


34  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

tivation,  a  Concord  gardener,  in  Thoreau's 
manhood,  bred  and  developed  the  Concord 
grape,  which  is  now  more  extensively  grown 
throughout  the  United  States  than  any 
other  vine,  and  once  adorned,  in  vineyards 
large  and  small,  the  hillsides  over  which 
Thoreau  rambled.  The  uplands  are  sandy 
in  many  places,  gravelly  and  rocky  in  oth 
ers,  and  nearly  half  the  township  is  now 
covered,  as  it  has  always  been,  with  woods 
of  oak,  pine,  chestnut,  and  maple.  It  is  a 
town  of  husbandmen,  chiefly,  with  a  few 
mechanics,  merchants,  and  professional  men 
in  its  villages ;  a  quiet  region,  favorable  to 
thought,  to  rambling,  and  to  leisure,  as  well 
as  to  that  ceaseless  industry  by  which  New 
England  lives  and  thrives.  Its  population 
in  1909  approaches  5,000,  but  at  Thoreau's 
birth  it  did  not  exceed  2,000.  There  are 
few  great  estates  in  it,  and  little  poverty  ; 
the  mode  of  life  has  generally  been  plain 
and  simple,  and  was  so  in  Thoreau's  time 
even  more  than  now.  When  he  was  born, 
and  for  some  years  afterward,  there  was  but 
one  church,  and  the  limits  of  the  parish  and 
the  township  were  the  same.  At  that  time 
Vt  was  one  of  the  two  shire  towns  of  the 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  35 

great  county  of  Middlesex,  —  Cambridge, 
thirteen  miles  away,  being  the  other.  It 
was  therefore  a  seat  of  justice  and  a  local 
centre  of  trade,  —  attracting  lawyers  and 
merchants  to  its  public  square  much  more 
than  of  late  years. 

Trade  in  Concord  then  was  very  different 
from  what  it  has  been  since  the  railroad 
began  to  work  its  revolutions.  In  the  old 
days,  long  lines  of  teams  from  the  upper 
country,  New  Hampshire  and  Vermont, 
loaded  with  the  farm  products  of  the  inte 
rior,  stopped  nightly  at  the  taverns,  espe 
cially  in  the  winter,  bound  for  the  Boston 
market,  whence  they  returned  with  a  cargo 
for  their  own  country.  If  a  thaw  came  on, 
or  there  was  bad  sleighing  in  Boston,  the 
drivers,  anxious  to  lighten  their  loads,  would 
sell  and  buy  in  the  Concord  public  square, 
to  the  great  profit  of  the  numerous  trad 
ers,  whose  little  shops  stood  around  or  near 
it.  Then,  too,  the  hitching-posts  in  front 
of  the  shops  had  full  rows  of  wagons  and 
chaises  from  the  neighboring  towns  fast 
ened  there  all  day  long ;  while  the  owners 
looked  over  goods,  priced,  chaffered,  and 
beat  down  by  the  hour  together  the  calicoes, 


36  HENRY  D.   TROREAU. 

sheetings,  shirtings,  kerseymeres,  and  other 
articles   of   domestic   need,  —  bringing   in, 
also,   the   product  of  their  own  farms  and 
looms  to  sell  or  exchange.     Each  "  store  " 
kept  an  assortment  of  "  West  India  goods," 
dry  goods,  hardware,  medicines,  furniture, 
boots  and  shoes,  paints,  lumber,  lime,  and 
the  miscellaneous  articles  of  which  the  vil> 
lage  or  the  farms  might  have  need  ;  not  to 
mention  a  special  trade  in   New  England 
rum  and  old  Jamaica,  hogsheads  of  which 
were  brought  up  every  week  from  Boston 
by  teams,  and  sold  or  given  away  by  the 
glass,  with  an  ungrudging  hand.     A  little 
earlier   than    the    period    now    mentioned, 
when  Colonel  Whiting  (father  of  the  late 
eminent  lawyer,  Abraham  Lincoln's  right- 
hand  adviser  in  the  law  of  emancipation, 
William  Whiting,  of   Boston)  was   a   lad 
in  Concord  village,  "  there  were  five  stores 
and   three   taverns  in   the   middle   of   the 
town,  where  intoxicating  liquors  were  sold 
by  the  glass  to  any  and  every  body;  and 
it  was  the  custom,  when   a  person  bought 
even  so  little  as  fifty  cents'  worth  of  goods, 
to  offer  him  a  glass  of  liquor,  and  it  was 
generally  accepted."      Such  was  the  town 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  37 

when  John  Thoreau,  the  Jerseyman,  came 
there  to  die  in  1800,  and  such  it  remained 
during  the  mercantile  days  of  John  Tho 
reau,  his  son,  who  was  brought  up  in  a 
house  on  the  public  square,  and  learned  the 
business  of  buying  and  selling  in  the  store 
of  Deacon  White,  close  by.  Pencil-mak 
ing,  the  art  by  which  he  earned  his  modest 
livelihood  during  Henry  Thoreau's  youth, 
was  introduced  into  Concord  about  1812 
by  William  Munroe,  whose  son  has  in  la 
ter  years  richly  endowed  the  small  free  li 
brary  from  which  Thoreau  drew  books,  and 
to  which  he  gave  some  of  his  own.  In  this 
handicraft,  which  was  at  times  quite  profit 
able,  the  younger  Thoreaus  assisted  their 
father  from  time  to  time,  and  Henry  ac 
quired  great  skill  in  it  ;  even  to  the  extent, 
says  Mr.  Emerson,  of  making  as  good  a 
pencil  as  the  best  English  ones.  "  His 
friends  congratulated  him  that  he  had  now 
opened  his  way  to  fortune.  But  he  replied 
that  he  should  never  make  another  pencil. 
1  Why  should  I  ?  I  would  not  do  again 
what  I  have  done  once.'  '  Thoreau  may 
have  said  this,  but  he  afterward  changed  his 
inind,  for  he  went  on  many  years,  at  inter- 


38  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

vals,  working  at  his  father's  business,  which, 
in  time  grew  to  be  mainly  the  preparation 
of  fine- ground  plumbago  for  electro  typing. 
This  he  supplied  to  various  publishers,  and 
among  others  to  the  Harpers,  for  several 
years.  But  what  he  did  in  this  way  was 
incidental,  and  as  an  aid  to  his  father,  his 
mother,  or  his  sister  Sophia,  who  herself 
carried  on  the  business  for  some  time  after 
the  death  of  Henry  in  1862.  It  was  the 
family  employment,  and  must  be  pursued 
by  somebody. 

Perpetuity,  indeed,  and  hereditary  trans 
mission  of  everything  that  by  nature  and 
good  sense  can  be  inherited,  are  among  the 
characteristics  of  Concord.  The  Hey  wood 
family  has  been  resident  in  Concord  for  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  or  so,  and  in  that 
time  has  held  the  office  of  town  clerk,  in 
lineal  succession  from  father  to  son,  for  one 
hundred  years  at  least.  The  grandson  of 
the  first  John  Heywood  filled  the  office 
(which  is  the  most  responsible  in  town,  and 
generally  accompanied  by  other  official 
trusts)  for  eighteen  years,  beginning  in 
1781  ;  his  son  held  the  place  with  a  slight 
interregnum  for  thirteen  years ;  his  nephew, 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH.  39 

Dr.  Abiel  Heywood,  was  town  clerk  from 
1796  to  1834  without  a  break,  and  Dr.  Hey- 
wood's  son,  Mr.  George  Heywood,  was  the 
town  clerk  for  thirty-odd  years  after  March, 
1853. 

Of  the  dozen  ministers"  who,  since  1635, 
have   preached   in   the   parish  church,  five 
were   either    Bulkeleys    or    Emersons,    de 
scendants  of  the  first  minister,  or  else  con 
nected  by  marriage  with  that  clerical  line ; 
and   the  young  minister  who,  in  the  year 
1882,  accepted  the  pastorate  of  Rev.  Peter 
Bulkeley,  is    a  descendant,  and  bears   the 
same  name.    Mr.  Emerson  himself,  the  great 
clerk  of  Concord,  which  was  his  lay  parish 
for  almost  half  a  century  after  he  ceased  to 
preach  in  its  pulpit,  counted  among  his  an 
cestors  four  of  the  Concord  pastors,  whose 
united   ministry  covered  a  century;  while 
his    grandmother's    second    husband,    Dr. 
Ripley,  added  a  half  century  more  to  the 
family  ministry.     For  this  ancestral  claim, 
quite   as  much  as  for  his  gift  of  wit  and 
eloquence,    Mr.    Emerson   was    chosen,   in 
1835,  to  commemorate  by  an  oration  the 
two  hundredth  aniversary  of  the  town  set 
tlement.     In  this  discourse  he  said  :  — 


40  HENRY  D.   TEOREAU* 

"I  have  had  much  opportunity  of  access  to 
anecdotes  of  families,  and  I  believe  this  town  to 
have  been  the  dwelling-place,  in  all  times  since 
its  planting,  of  pious  and  excellent  persons,  who 
walked  meekly  through  the  paths  of  common 
life,  who  served  God  and  loved  man,  and  never 
let  go  their  hope  of  immortality.  I  find  our  an 
nals  marked  with  a  uniform  good  sense.  I  find 
no  ridiculous  laws,  no  eavesdropping  legislators, 
no  hanging  of  witches,  no  ghosts,  no  whipping  of 
Quakers,  no  unnatural  crimes.  The  old  town 
clerks  did  not  spell  very  correctly,  but  they  con 
trived  to  make  pretty  intelligible  the  will  of  a 
free  and  just  community." 

Into  such  a  community  Henry  Thoreau, 
a  free  and  just  man,  was  born.  Dr.  Hey- 
wood,  above-named,  was  the  first  town 
clerk  he  remembered,  and  the  one  who  en 
tered  on  the  records  the  marriage  of  his 
father  and  mother,  and  the  birth  of  all  the 
children.  He  cried  the  banns  of  John  Tho- 
reau  and  Cynthia  D unbar  in  the  parish 
meeting-house ;  and  he  was  the  last  clerk 
who  made  this  Sunday  outcry. 

He  thus  proclaimed  his  own  autumnal 
nuptials  in  1822,  when  he  married  for  the 
first  time  at  the  age  of  sixty-three.  The 
banns  were  cried  at  the  opening  of  the 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  41 

service,  and  this  compelled  the  town  clerk 
to  be  a  more  regular  attendant  in  the  meet 
ing-house  than  his  successors  have  found 
necessary.  Dr.  Heywood's  pew  was  about 
half-way  down  the  broad  aisle,  and  in  full 
view  of  the  whole  congregation,  whether 
in  the  "  floor  pews  "  or  "  up  in  the  galler 
ies."  Wearing  his  old-fashioned  coat  and 
small-clothes,  the  doctor  would  rise  in  his 
pew,  deliberately  adjust  his  spectacles,  and 
look  about  for  a  moment,  .in  order  to  make 
sure  that  his  audience  was  prepared  ;  then 
he  made  his  proclamation  with  much  em 
phasis  of  voice  and  dignity  of  manner. 
There  was  a  distinction,  however,  in  the 
manner  of  "publishing  the  banns"  of  the 
white  and  the  black  citizens ;  the  former  be 
ing  "cried"  in  the  face  of  the  whole  congre 
gation,  and  the  latter  simply  "  posted  "  in 
the  meeting-house  porch,  as  was  afterwards 
the  custom  for  all.  Dr.  Heywood,  from  a 
sense  of  justice,  or  some  other  proper  mo 
tive,  determined  on  one  occasion  to  "  post" 
a  white  couple,  instead  of  giving  them  the 
full  benefit  of  his  sonorous  voice ;  but,  either 
because  they  missed  the  eclat  of  the  usual 
proclamation,  or  else  felt  humiliated  at  be- 


42  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ing  "posted  like  niggers  in  the  porch," 
they  brought  the  town  clerk  to  justice  forth 
with,  and  he  was  forced  for  once  to  yield  to 
popular  outcry,  and  join  in  the  outcry  him 
self.  After  publishing  his  own  banns,  and 
just  before  the  wedding,  he  for  the  first 
time  procured  a  pair  of  trousers,  —  having 
worn  knee-breeches  up  to  that  time,  as  Col 
onel  May  (the  father-in-law  of  Mr.  Alcott) 
and  others  had  thought  it  proper  to  wear 
them.  When  Dr.  Heywood  told  his  wag 
gish  junior,  'Squire  Brooks,  of  the  purchase, 
and  inquired  how  young  gentlemen  put 
their  trousers  on,  his  legal  neighbor  advised 
him  that  they  were  generally  put  on  over 
the  head. 

Dr.  Heywood  survived  amid  "this  age 
loose  and  all  unlaced,"  as  Marvell  says,  un 
til  1839,  having  practiced  medicine,  more 
or  less,  in  Concord  for  upward  of  forty 
years,  and  held  court  there  as  a  local  jus 
tice  for  almost  as  long.  Dr.  Isaac  Hurd, 
who  was  his  contemporary,  practiced  in 
Concord  for  fifty-four  years,  and  in  all  sixty- 
five  years ;  and  Dr.  Josiah  Bartlett,  who 
accompanied  and  succeeded  Dr.  Hurd,  prac 
ticed  in  Concord  nearly  fifty-eight  years- 
while  the  united  medical  service  of  himself 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH.  43 

and  his  father,  Dr.  Josiah  Bartlett  of 
Charlestown,  was  one  hundred  and  two 
years. 

Dr.  Bartlett  himself  was  one  of  the  most 
familiar  figures  in  Concord  through  Tho- 
reau's  life-time,  and  for  fifteen  years  after. 
To  him  have  been  applied,  with  more  truth, 
I  suspect,  than  to  "  Mr.  Robert  Levet,  a 
Practiser  in  Physic,"  those  noble  lines  of 
Dr.  Johnson  on  his  humble  friend  :  — 

"  Well  tried  through  many  a  varying  year, 

See  Levet  to  the  grave  descend, 
Officious,  innocent,  sincere, 

Of  every  friendless  name  the  friend." 

He  said  more  than  once  that  for  fifty  years 
no  severity  of  weather  had  kept  him  from 
visiting  his  distant  patients,  —  sometimes 
miles  away, — except  once,  and  then  the 
snow  was  piled  so  high  that  his  sleigh  upset 
every  two  rods  ;  and  when  he  unharnessed 
and  mounted  his  horse,  the  beast,  flounder 
ing  through  a  drift,  slipped  him  off  over  his 
crupper.  He  was  a  master  of  the  horse, 
and  encouraged  that  proud  creature  to  do 
his  best  in  speed.  One  of  .his  neighbors 
mentioned  in  his  hearing  a  former  horse  of 
Dr.  Bartlett's,  which  was  in  the  habit  of 


i4  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

running  away.  "  By  faith  !  "  said  the  doc 
tor  (his  familiar  oath),  "  I  recollect  that 
horse ;  he  was  a  fine  traveler,  but  I  have 
no  remembrance  that  he  ever  ran  away." 
When  upwards  of  seventy,  he  was  looking 
for  a  new  horse.  The  jockey  said,  "  Doc 
tor,  if  you  were  not  so  old,  I  have  a  horse 
that  would  suit  you."  "  Hm  !  "  growled  the 
doctor,  "  don't  talk  to  me  about  old.  Let 's 
see  your  horse ; "  and  he  bought  him,  and 
drove  him  for  eight  years.  He  practiced 
among  the  poor  with  no  hope  of  reward, 
and  gave  them,  besides,  his  money,  his 
time,  and  his  influence.  One  day  a  friend 
saw  him  receiving  loads  of  firewood  from  a 
shiftless  man  to  whom  he  had  rendered 
gratuitous  service  in  sickness  for  twenty 
years.  "  Ah,  doctor  !  you  are  getting  some 
of  your  back  pay."  "  By  faith  !  no ;  the 
fellow  is  poor,  so  I  paid  him  for  his  wood, 
and  let  him  go." 

Dr.  Bartlett  did  not  reach  Concord  quite 
in  season  to  assist  at  the  birth  of  Henry 
Thoreau  ;  but  from  the  time  his  parents 
brought  him  back  to  his  native  town  from 
Boston,  in  1823,  to  the  day  of  Sophia  Tho- 
reau's  death,  in  1876,  he  might  have  sup 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  45 

plied  the  needed  medical  aid  to  the  family, 
and  often  did  so.  The  young  Henry  dwelt 
in  his  first  tabernacle  on  the  Virginia  road 
but  eight  months,  removing  then  to  a 
house  on  the  Lexington  road,  not  far  from 
where  Mr.  Emerson  afterwards  established 
his  residence,  on  the  edge  of  Concord  vil 
lage.  In  the  mean  time  he  had  been  bap 
tized  by  Dr.  Ripley  in  the  parish  church,  at 
the  age  of  three  months ;  and  his  mother 
boasted  that  he  did  not  cry.  His  aunt, 
Sarah  Thoreau,  taught  him  to  walk  when 
he  was  fourteen  months  old,  and  before  he 
was  sixteen  months  he  removed  to  Chelms- 
ford,  "next  to  the  meeting-house,  where 
they  kept  the  powder,  in  the  garret,"  as  was 
the  custom  in  many  village  churches  of 
New  England  then.  Coming  back  to  Con 
cord  before  he  was  six  years  old,  he  soon 
began  to  drive  his  mother's  cow  to  pasture, 
barefoot,  like  other  village  boys ;  just  as 
Emerson,  when  a  boy  in  Boston,  a  dozen 
years  before,  had  driven  his  mother's  cow 
where  now  the  fine  streets  and  halls  are. 
Thoreau,  like  Emerson,  began  to  go  to 
school  in  Boston,  where  he  lived  for  a  year 
or  more  in  Pinckney  Street.  But  he  re- 


46  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

turned  to  Concord  in  1823,  and,  except  for 
short  visits  or  long  walking  excursions,  he 
never  left  the  town  again  till  he  died,  in 
1862.  He  there  went  on  with  his  studies 
in  the  village  schools,  and  fitted  for  Har 
vard  College  at  the  "Academy,"  which 
'Squire  Hoar,  Colonel  Whiting,  'Squire 
Brooks,  and  other  magnates'  of  the  town 
had  established  about  1820.  This  private 
school  was  generally  very  well  taught,  and 
here  Thoreau  himself  taught  for  a  while  in 
after  years.  In  his  boyhood  it  had  become 
a  good  place  to  study  Greek,  and  in  1830, 
when  perhaps  Henry  Thoreau  was  one  of 
its  pupils,  Mr.  Charles  Emerson,  visiting 
his  friends  in  Concord,  wrote  thus  of  what 
he  saw  there :  "Mr.  George  Bradford  and 
I  attended  the  Exhibition  yesterday  at  the 
Academy.  We  were  extremely  gratified. 
To  hear  little  girls  saying  their  Greek 
grammar  and  young  ladies  read  Xenophon 
was  a  new  and  very  agreeable  entertain 
ment."  Thoreau  must  have  been  begin 
ning  his  Greek  grammar  about  that  time, 
for  he  entered  college  in  1833,  and  was 
then  proficient  in  Greek.  He  must  also 
have  gone,  as  a  boy,  to  the  "  Concord  Ly- 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  47 

ceum,"  where  he  afterwards  lectured  every 
winter.  Concord,  as  the  home  of  famous 
lawyers  and  active  politicians,  was  always  a 
place  of  resort  for  political  leaders,  and 
Thoreau  might  have  seen  and  heard  there 
all  the  celebrated  congressmen  and  govern 
ors  of  Massachusetts,  at  one  time  and  an 
other.  He  could  remember  the  visit  of 
Lafayette  to  Concord  in  1824,  and  the  semi 
centennial  celebration  of  the  Concord  Fight 
in  1825.  In  1830  he  doubtless  looked  for 
ward  with  expectation  for  the  promised 
lecture  of  Edward  Everett  before  the  Ly 
ceum,  concerning  which  Mr.  Everett  wrote 
as  follows  to  Dr.  Ripley  (November  3, 
1830) :  — 

"  I  am  positively  forbidden  by  my  physician  to 
come  to  Concord  to-day.  To  obviate,  as  far  as 
possible,  the  inconvenience  which  this  failure 
might  cause  the  Lyceum,  I  send  you  the  lecture 
which  I  should  have  delivered.  It  is  one  which 
I  have  delivered  twice  before ;  but  my  health 
has  prevented  me  from  preparing  another.  Al 
though  in  print,  as  you  see,  it  has  not  been  pub 
lished.  I  held  it  back  from  publication  to  ena 
ble  me,  with  propriety,  to  deliver  it  at  Concord. 
Should  you  think  it  worth  while  to  have  it  read 


48  HENRY  D,   THOREAU. 

to  the  meeting,  it  is  at  your  service  for  that  pur 
pose  ;  and,  should  this  be  done,  I  would  suggest, 
as  it  is  one  hour  and  three  quarters  long,  that 
some  parts  should  be  omitted.  For  this  reason 
I  have  inclosed  some  passages  in  brackets,  which 
can  be  spared  without  affecting  the  context." 

It  would  hardly  occur  to  a  popular  lec 
turer  now  to  apologize  because  he  had  de 
livered  his  lecture  twice  before,  or  to  send 
the  copy  forward,  when  he  could  not  him 
self  be  there  to  read  it. 

Mr.  Emerson  began  to  lecture  in  the 
Concord  Lyceum  before  1834,  when  he 
came  to  reside  in  the  town.  In  October  of 
that  year  he  wrote  to  Dr.  Ripley,  declining 
to  give  the  opening  lecture,  but  offering  to 
speak  in  the  course  of  the  winter,  as  he  did* 
During  its  first  half  century  he  lectured  near 
ly  a  hundred  times  in  this  Lyceum,  reading 
there,  first  and  last,  nearly  all  the  essays  he 
published  in  his  lifetime,  and  many  that 
have  since  been  printed.  Thoreau  gave 
his  first  lecture  there  in  April,  1838,  and 
afterwards  lectured  nearly  every  year  for 
more  than  twenty  years.  On  one  occasion, 
very  early  in  his  public  career,  when  the 
expected  lecturer  of  the  Lyceum  failed  to 


CHILDHOOD  AND    YOUTH.  49 

come,  as  Mr.  Everett  had  failed,  but  had 
not  been  thoughtful  enough  to  send  a  sub 
stitute,  Henry  Thoreau  and  Mr.  Alcott 
were  pressed  into  the  service,  and  spoke 
before  the  audience  in  duet,  and  with  opin 
ions  extremely  heretical, — both  being  ardent 
radicals  and  "  come-outers."  A  few  years 
after  this  (in  1843),  Wendell  Phillips  made 
his  first  appearance  before  the  Concord  Ly 
ceum,  and  spoke  in  a  manner  which  Tho 
reau  has  described  in  print,  and  which  led 
to  a  sharp  village  controversy,  not  yet  quite 
forgotten  on  either  side. 

But  to  return  to  the  childhood  and  youth 
of  Thoreau.  When  he  was  three  or  four 
years  old,  at  Chelmsford,  on  being  told  that 
he  must  die,  as  well  as  the  men  in  the  New 
England  Primer,  and  having  the  joys  of 
heaven  explained  to  him,  he  said,  as  he 
came  in  from  "  coasting,"  that  he  did  not 
want  to  die  and  go  to  heaven,  because  he 
could  not  carry  his  sled  to  so  fine  a  place ; 
for,  he  added,  "  the  boys  say  it  is  not  shod 
with  iron,  and  not  worth  a  cent."  At  the 
age  of  ten,  says  Channing,  "  he  had  the 
firmness  of  the  Indian,  and  could  repress 
his  pathos,  and  had  such  seriousness  that 

4 


50  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

he  was  called  *  judge.' "  As  an  example  of 
childish  fortitude,  it  is  related  that  he  car» 
ried  his  pet  chickens  for  sale  to  the  tavern- 
keeper  in  a  basket ;  whereupon  Mr.  Wesson 
told  him  to  '  stop  a  minute,'  and,  in  order 
to  return  the  basket  promptly,  took  the 
darlings  out,  and  wrung  their  necks,  one  by 
one,  before  the  boy's  eyes,  who  wept  in 
wardly,  but  did  not  budge.  Having  a 
knack  at  whittling,  and  being  asked  by  a 
schoolmate  to  make  him  a  bow  and  arrow, 
young  Henry  refused,  not  deigning  to  give 
the  reason,  —  that  he  had  no  knife.  "  So 
through  life,"  says  Channing,  "  he  steadily 
declined  trying  or  pretending  to  do  what 
he  had  no  means  to  execute,  yet  forbore 
explanations."  He  was  a  sturdy  and  kindly 
playmate,  whose  mirthful  tricks  are  yet  re 
membered  by  those  who  frolicked  with  him, 
and  he  always  abounded  with  domestic  af 
fection.  While  in  college  he  once  asked 
his  mother  what  profession  she  would  have 
him  choose.  She  said,  pleasantly,  "  You 
can  buckle  on  your  knapsack,  dear,  and 
roam  abroad  to  seek  your  fortune;"  but 
the  thought  of  leaving  home  and  forsaking 
Concord  made  the  tears  roll  down  his 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  51 

cheeks.  Then  his  sister  Helen,  who  was 
standing  by,  says  Channing,  "  tenderly  put 
her  arm  around  him  and  kissed  him,  say 
ing,  «  No,  Henry,  you  shall  not  go ;  you 
shall  stay  at  home  and  live  with  us.'"  And 
this,  indeed,  he  did,  though  he  made  one  oi)  ^/c 
two  efforts  to  seek  his  fortune  for  a  time 
elsewhere. 

His  reading  had  been  wide  and  constant 
while  at  school,  and  after  he  entered  college 
at  the  age  of  sixteen.  His  room  in  Cam 
bridge  was  in  Hollis  Hall ;  his  instructors 
were  such  as  he  found  there,  but  in  rheto 
ric  he  profited  much  by  the  keen  intelli 
gence  of  Professor  Channing,  an  uncle  of 
his  future  friend  and  x  biographer,  Ellery 
Channing.  I  think  he  also  came  in  contact, 
while  in  college,  with  that  singular  poet, 
Jones  Very,  of  Salem.  He  was  by  no 
means  unsocial  in  college,  though  he  did 
not  form  such  abiding  friendships  as  do 
many  young  men.  He  graduated  in  1837. 
His  expenses  at  Cambridge,  which  were 
very  moderate,  compared  with  what  a  poor 
scholar  must  now  pay  to  go  through  college, 
were  paid  in  part  by  his  father,  in  part  by 
his  aunts  and  his  elder  sister,  Helen,  who 


52  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

had  already  begun  to  teach  school ;  and  for 
the  rest  he  depended  on  his  own  efforts  and 
the  beneficiary  funds  of  the  college,  in 
which  he  had  some  little  share.  I  have 
understood  that  he  received  the  income  of 
the  same  modest  endowment  which  had 
been  given  to  William  and  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson  when  in  college,  some  years  be 
fore  ;  and  in  other  ways  the  generous  thought 
of  that  most  princely  man,  Waldo  Emerson, 
was  not  idle  in  his  behalf,  though  he  knew 
Thoreau  then  only  as  the  studious  son 
of  a  townsman,  who  needed  a  friend  at 
court.  What  Mr.  Emerson  wrote  to  Josiah 
Quincy,  who  was  then  president  of  Har 
vard  College,  in  behalf  of  Henry  Thoreau 
does  not  appear,  except  from  the  terms  of 
old  Quincy's  reply;  but  we  may  infer  it. 
Thoreau  had  the  resource  of  school-keeping 
in  the  country  towns,  during  the  college 
vacation  and  the  extra  vacation  that  a  poor 
scholar  could  claim ;  and  this  brought  him, 
in  1835,  to  an  acquaintance  with  that  elder 
scholar,  Brownson,  who  afterwards  became 
a  Catholic  doctor  of  theology.  He  left  col 
lege  one  winter  to  teach  school  at  Canton, 
near  Boston,  where  he  was  examined  by 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  53 

Rev.  Orestes  A.  Brownson,  then  a  Prot 
estant  minister  in  Canton.  He  studied  Ger 
man  and  boarded  with  Mr.Brownson  while 
he  taught  the  school.  In  1836,  he  records 
in  his  journal  that  he  "  went  to  New  York 
with  father,  peddling."  In  his  senior  year, 
1836-87,  he  was  ill  for  a  time,  and  lost  rank 
with  his  instructors  by  his  indifference  to 
the  ordinary  college  motives  for  study. 
This  fact,  and  also  that  he  was  a  benefici 
ary  of  the  college,  further  appears  from  the 
letter  of  President  Quincy  to  Mr.  Emerson, 
as  follows :  — 

"  CAMBRIDGE,  25th  June,  1837. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  Your  view  concerning  Tho- 
reau  is  entirely  in  consent  with  that  which  I  en 
tertain.  His  general  conduct  has  been  very  sat 
isfactory,  and  I  was  willing  and  desirous  that 
whatever  falling  off  there  had  been  in  his  scholar 
ship  should  be  attributable  to  his  sickness.  He 
had,  however,  imbibed  some  notions  concerning 
emulation  and  college  rank  which  had  a  natural 
tendency  to  diminish  his  zeal,  if  not  his  exertions. 
His  instructors  were  impressed  with  the  convic 
tion  that  he  was  indifferent,  even  to  a  degree  that 
was  faulty,  and  that  they  could  not  recommend 
him,  consistent  with  the  rule  by  which  they  are 
usually  governed  in  relation  to  beneficiaries.  I 


54  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

have  always  entertained  a  respect  for  and  interest 
in  him,  and  was  willing  to  attribute  any  apparent 
neglect  or  indifference  to  his  ill  health  rather  than 
to  wilf  illness.  I  obtained  from  the  instructors  the 
authority  to  state  all  the  facts  to  the  Corporation, 
and  submit  the  result  to  their  discretion.  This  I 
did,  and  that  body  granted  twenty-Jive  dollars, 
which  was  within  ten,  or  at  most  fifteen,  dollars  of 
any  sum  he  would  have  received,  had  no  objec 
tion  been  made.  There  is  no  doubt  that,  from 
some  cause,  an  unfavorable  opinion  has  been  en 
tertained,  since  his  return  after  his  sickness,  of 
his  disposition  to  exert  himself.  To  what  it  has 
been  owing  may  be  doubtful.  I  appreciate  very 
fully  the  goodness  of  his  heart  and  the  strictness 
of  his  moral  principle  ;  and  have  done  as  much 
for  him  as,  under  the  circumstances,  was  possible. 
Very  respectfully,  your  humble  servant, 

"JOSIAH    QUINCT. 

"  Rev.  R.  W.  EMERSON." 

It  is  possible  the  college  faculty  may 
have  had  other  grounds  of  distrust  in  Tho- 
reau's  case.  On  May  30,  1836,  his  class 
mate  Peabody  wrote  him  the  following  let 
ter  from  Cambridge,  —  Thoreau  being  then 
at  home,  for  some  reason, —  from  which  we 
may  infer  that  the  sober  youth  was  not 
averse  to  such  deeds  as  are  there  related  :  — • 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH.  55 

"  The  Davy  Club  got  into  a  little  trouble,  the 
week  before  last,  from  the  following  circum 
stance  :  H.  W.  gave  a  lecture  on  Pyrotechny, 
and  illustrated  it  with  a  parcel  of  fireworks  he 
had  prepared  in  the  vacation.  As  you  may  im 
agine,  there  was  some  slight  noise  on  the  occa 
sion.  In  fact,  the  noise  was  so  slight  that  Tutor 
B.  heard  it  at  his  room  in  Holworthy.  This 
worthy  boldly  determined  to  march  forth  and 
attack  the  '  rioters.'  Accordingly,  in  the  midst 
of  a  grand  display  of  rockets,  etc.,  he  stepped 
into  the  room,  and,  having  gazed  round  him  in 
silent  astonishment  for  the  space  of  two  minutes, 
and  hearing  various  cries  of  '  Intrusion  ! '  « Throw 
him  over  ! '  '  Saw  his  leg  off ! '  <  Pull  his  wool ! ' 
etc.,  he  made  two  or  three  dignified  motions  with 
his  hand  to  gain  attention,  and  then  kindly  ad 
vised  us  to  *  retire  to  our  respective  rooms.' 
Strange  to  say,  he  found  no  one  inclined  to  follow 
this  good  advice,  and  he  accordingly  thought  fit 
to  withdraw.  There  is,  as  perhaps  you  know,  a 
law  against  keeping  powder  in  the  college  build 
ings.  The  effect  of  Tutor  B.'s  intrusion  was 
evident  on  the  next  Monday  night,  when  H.  W. 
and  B.  were  invited  to  call  and  see  President 
Quincy  ;  and  owing  to  the  tough  reasoning  of 
Tutor  B.,  who  boldly  asserted  that  *  powder  was 
powder/  they  were  each  presented  with  a  public 
admonition. 


56  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

"  We  had  a  miniature  volcano  at  Webster's 
lecture,  the  other  morning  [this  was  Professor 
Webster,  afterwards  hanged  for  the  murder  of 
Dr.  Parkman],  and  the  odors  therefrom  sur 
passed  all  ever  produced  by  Araby  the  Blest. 
Imagine  to  yourself  all  the  windows  and  shutters 
of  the  lecture-room  closed,  and  then  conceive 
the  delightful  scent  produced  by  the  burning  of 
nearly  a  bushel  of  sulphur,  phosphoretted  hydro 
gen,  and  other  still  more  pleasant  ingredients. 
As  soon  as  the  burning  commenced,  there  was  a 
general  rush  to  the  door,  and  a  crowd  collected 
there,  running  out  every  half  minute  to  get  a 
breath  of  fresh  air,  and  then  coming  in  to  see  the 
volcano.  l  No  noise  nor  nothing.'  Bigelow  and 
Dr.  Bacon  manufactured  some  '  laughing  gas,' 
and  administered  it  on  the  Delta.  It  was  much 
better  than  that  made  by  Webster.  Jack  Weiss 
took  some,  as  usual ;  Wheeler,  Jo  Allen,  and  Hil- 
dreth  each  received  a  dose.  Wheeler  proceeded 
to  dance  for  the  amusement  of  the  company,  Jo 
jumped  over  the  Delta  fence,  and  Sam  raved 
about  Milton,  Shakespeare,  Byron,  etc.  lie  took 
two  doses  ;  it  produced  a  great  effect  on  him. 
He  seemed  to  be  as  happy  as  a  mortal  could  de 
sire  ;  talked  with  Shakespeare,  Milton,  etc.,  and 
seemed  to  be  quite  at  home  with  them." 

The  persons  named  were  classmates  of 
Thoreau :  one  of  them  afterward  Rev.  John 


CHILDHOOD  AND    YOUTH.  57 

Weiss ;  Wheeler  was  of  Lincoln,  and  died 
early  in  Germany,  whither  he  went  to  study ; 
Samuel  Tenney  Hildreth  was  a  brother  of 
Richard  Hildreth,  the  historian,  and  also 
died  young.  The  zest  with  which  his  class 
mate  related  these  pranks  to  Thoreau  seems 
to  imply  in  his  correspondent  a  mind  too 
ready  towards  such  things  to  please  the 
learned  faculty  of  Cambridge. 

Mr.  Quincy's  letter  was  in  reply  to  one 
which  Mr.  Emerson  had  written  at  the  re 
quest  of  Mrs.  Thoreau,  •who  feared  her  son 
was  not  receiving  justice  from  the  college 
authorities.  Thoreau  graduated  without 
much  distinction,  but  with  a  good  name 
ainong  his  classmates,  and  a  high  reputation 
for  general  scholarship.  When  he  went  to 
Maine,  in  May,  1838,  to  see  if  there  was 
not  some  school  for  him  to  teach  there,  he 
took  with  him  this  certificate  from  his  pas 
tor,  Dr.  Ripley :  — 

"CONCORD,  May  1,  1838. 

"  To  THE  FRIENDS  OF  EDUCATION,  —  The 
undersigned  very  cheerfully  hereby  introduces  to 
public  notice  the  bearer,  Mr.  David  Henry  Tho 
reau,  as  a  teacher  in  the  higher  branches  of 
useful  literature.  He  is  a  native  of  this  town, 


58  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

and  a  graduate  of  Harvard  University.  He  is 
well  disposed  and  well  qualified  to  instruct  the 
rising  generation.  His  scholarship  and  moral 
character  will  bear  the  strictest  scrutiny.  He  is 
modest  and  mild  in  his  disposition  and  govern 
ment,  but  not  wanting  in  energy  of  character  and 
fidelity  in  the  duties  of  his  profession.  It  is  pre 
sumed  his  character  and  usefulness  will  be  appre 
ciated  more  highly  as  an  acquaintance  with  him 
shall  be  cultivated.  Cordial  wishes  for  his  suc 
cess,  reputation,  and  usefulness  attend  him,  as  an 
instructor  and  gentleman. 

"  EZRA  RIPLET, 

"  Senior  Pastor  of  the  First  Church  in 
Concord,  Mass. 

"  N.  B.  —  It  is  but  justice  to  observe  here  that 
the  eyesight  of  the  writer  is  much  impaired" 

Accompanying  this  artless  document  is  a 
list  of  clergymen  in  the  towns  of  Maine, 
—  Portland,  Belfast,  Camden,  Kennebunk, 
Castine,  Ellsworth,  etc.,  —  in  the  hand 
writing  of  the  good  old  pastor,  signifying 
that  as  young  Thoreau  traveled  he  should 
report  himself  to  these  brethren,  who  might 
forward  his  wishes.  But  even  at  that  early 
date,  I  suspect  that  Thoreau  undervalued 
the  "  D.  D.'s "  in  comparison  with  the 


CHILDHOOD  AND   YOUTH.  59 

"  chickadedees,"  as  he  plainly  declared  in 
his  later  years.  Another  certificate,  in  a 
firmer  hand,  and  showing  no  token  of  im 
paired  eyesight,  was  also  carried  by  Tho- 
reau  in  this  first  visit  to  Maine.  It  was 
this :  — 

"  I  cordially  recommend  Mr.  Henry  D.  Tho- 
reau,  a  graduate  of  Harvard  University  in  August, 
1837,  to  the  confidence  of  such  parents  or  guard 
ians  as  may  propose  to  employ  him  as  an  instruc 
tor.  I  have  the  highest  confidence  in  Mr.  Tho- 
reau's  moral  character,  and  in  his  intellectual 
ability.  He  is  an  excellent  scholar,  a  man  of 
energy  and  kindness,  and  I  shall  esteem  the  town 
fortunate  that  secures  his  services. 

"R.  WALDO  EMERSON. 

s'  CONCORD,  May  2,  1838." 

The  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Emerson  with  his 
young  townsman  had  begun  perhaps  a  year 
before  this  date,  and  had  advanced  very  fast 
toward  intimacy.  It  originated  in  this  way : 
A  lady  connected  with  Mr.  Emerson's  fam 
ily  was  visiting  at  Mrs.  Thoreau's  while 
Henry  was  in  college,  and  the  conversation 
turned  on  a  lecture  lately  read  in  Concord 
by  Mr.  Emerson.  Miss  Helen  Thoreau  sur 
prised  the  visitor  by  saying,  "  My  brother 


60  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

Henry  has  a  passage  in  his  diary  containing 
the  same  things  that  Mr.  Emerson  has  said." 
This  remark  being  questioned,  the  diary 
was  produced,  and,  sure  enough,  the  thought 
of  the  two  passages  was  found  to  be  very 
similar.  The  incident  being  reported  to 
Mr.  Emerson,  he  desired  the  lady  to  bring 
Henry  Thoreau  to  see  him,  which  was  soon 
done,  and  the  intimacy  began.  It  was  to 
this  same  lady  (Mrs.  Brown,  of  Plymouth) 
that  Thoreau  addressed  one  of  his  earliest 
poems, — the  verses  called  "  Sic  Vita,"  in 
the  "  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac,'v 
commencing :  — 

'•'  I  am  a  parcel  of  vain  strivings,  tied 
By  a  chance  bond  together." 

These  verses  were  written  on  a  strip  of 
paper  inclosing  a  bunch  of  violets,  gath 
ered  in  May,  1837,  and  thrown  in  at  Mrs. 
Brown's  window  by  the  poet-naturalist. 
They  show  that  he  had  read  George  Her 
bert  carefully,  at  a  time  when  few  persons 
did  so  ,  and  in  other  ways  they  are  charac 
teristic  of  the  writer,  who  was  then  not  quite 
twenty  years  old. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  see  what  old 
Quincy  himself  said,  in  a  certificate,  about 


CHILDHOOD  AND    YOUTH.  61 

his  stubbornly  independent  pupil.  For  the 
same  Maine  journey  Cambridge  furnished 
the  Concord  scholar  -with  this  document:  — 

"  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY,  CAMBRIDGE, 
March  26,  1838. 

"To  WHOM  IT  MAY  CONCERN,  —  I  certify  that 
Henry  D.  Thoreau,  of  Concord,  in  this  State  of 
Massachusetts,  graduated  at  this  seminary  in  Au 
gust,  1837  ;  that  his  rank  was  high  as  a  scholar 
in  all  the  branches,  and  his  morals  and  general 
conduct  unexceptionable  and  exemplary.  He  is 
recommended  as  well  qualified  as  an  instructor, 
for  employment  in  any  public  or  private  school 
or  private  family.  JOSIAH  QUINCY, 

"  President  of  Harvard  University" 

It  seems  that  there  was  question,  at  this 
time,  of  a  school  in  Alexandria,  near  Wash 
ington  (perhaps  the  Theological  Seminary 
for  Episcopalians  there),  in  which  young 
Thoreau  might  find  a  place;  for  on  the 
12th  of  April,  1838,  President  Quincy 
wrote  to  him  as  follows :  — 

"Sin,  —  The  school  is  at  Alexandria  ;  the  stu 
dents  are  said  to  be  young  men  well  advanced  in 
ye  knowledge  of  ye  Latin  and  Greek  classics; 
the  requisitions  are,  qualification  and  a  person 
who  has  had  experience  in  school  keeping.  Sal- 


62  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ary  $600  a  year,  besides  washing  and  Board ; 
duties  to  be  entered  on  ye  5th  or  6th  of  May. 
If  you  choose  to  apply,  I  will  write  as  soon  as  I 
am  informed  of  it.  State  to  me  your  experience 
in  school  keeping.  Yours, 

"  JOSIAH  QUINCY." 

We  now  know  that  Thoreau  offered  him 
self  for  the  place;  and  we  know  that  his 
journey  to  Maine  was  fruitless.  He  did,  in 
fact,  teach  the  town  grammar  school  in  Con 
cord  for  a  few  weeks  in  1837,  and  in  July, 
1838,  was  teaching,  at  the  Parkman  house, 
in  Concord.  He  had  already,  as  we  have 
seen,  though  not  yet  twenty-one,  appeared 
as  a  lecturer  before  the  Concord  Lyceum. 
It  is  therefore  time  to  consider  him  as  a  cit 
izen  of  Concord,  and  to  exhibit  further  the 
character  of  that  town. 

Note.  —  The  Tutor  mentioned  on  page  55  was  Francis 
Bowen,  afterward  professor  at  Harvard;  the  other  "  B." 
was  H.  J.  Bigelow,  afterward  a  noted  surgeon  in  Boston. 


CHAPTER  III. 

CONCOED  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE. 

THE  Thoreau  family  was  but  newly 
planted  in  Concord,  to  which  it  was  alien 
both  by  the  father's  and  the  mother's  side. 
But  this  wise  town  adopts  readily  the  chil 
dren  of  other  communities  that  claim  its 
privileges,  —  and  to  Henry  Thoreau  these 
came  by  birth.  Of  all  the  men  of  letters  that 
have  given  Concord  a  name  throughout  the 
world,  he  is  almost  the  only  one  who  was 
born  there.  Emerson  was  born  in  Boston, 
Alcott  in  Connecticut,  Hawthorne  in  Salem, 
Channing  in  Boston,  Louisa  Alcott  in  Ger- 
mantown,  and  others  elsewhere ;  but  Tho 
reau  was  native  to  the  soil.  And  since  his 
genius  has  been  shaped  and  guided  by  the 
personal  traits  of  those  among  whom  he 
lived,  as  well  as  by  the  hand  of  God  and  by 
the  intuitive  impulses  of  his  own  spirit,  it 
is  proper  to  see  what  the  men  of  Concord 
have  really  been,  It  is  from  them  we  must 


64  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

judge  the  character  of  the  town  and  its  civil 
ization,  not  from  those  exceptional,  imported 
persons  —  cultivated  men  and  women,  — 
who  may  be  regarded  as  at  the  head  of  so 
ciety,  and  yet  may  have  no  representative 
quality  at  all.  It  is  not  by  the  few  that  a 
New  England  town  is  to  be  judged,  but  by 
the  many.  Yet  there  were  a  Few  and  a 
Many  in  Concord,  between  whom  certain 
distinctions  could  be  drawn,  in  the  face  of 
that  general  equality  which  the  institutions 
of  New  England  compel.  Life  in  our  new 
country  had  not  yet  been  reduced  to  the 
ranks  of  modern  civilization  —  so  orderly 
outward,  so  full  of  mutiny  within. 

It  is  mentioned  by  Tacitus,  in  his  life  of 
Agricola,  that  this  noble  Roman  lived  as  a 
child  in  Marseilles  ;  "  a  place,"  he  adds,  "  of 
Grecian  culture  and  provincial  frugality, 
mingled  and  well  blended."  I  have  thought 
this  felicitous  phrase  of  Tacitus  most  appo 
site  for  Concord  as  I  have  known  it  since 
1854,  and  as  Thoreau  must  have  found  it 
from  1830  onward.  Its  people  lived  then 
and  since  with  little  display,  while  learning 
was  held  in  high  regard  ;  and  the  "  plain 
living  and  high  thinking,"  which  Words- 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     65 

worth  declared  were  gone  from  England, 
have  never  been  absent  from  this  New  Eng 
land  town.  It  has  always  been  a  town  of 
much  social  equality,  and  yet  of  great  social 
and  spiritual  contrasts.  Most  of  its  inhab 
itants  have  lived  in  a  plain  way  for  the  two 
centuries  and  a  half  that  it  has  been  inhab 
ited  ;  but  at  all  times  some  of  them  have 
had  important  connections  with  the  great 
world  of  politics,  affairs,  and  literature. 
Rev.  Peter  Bulkeley,  the  founder  and  first 
minister  of  the  town,  was  a  near  kinsman 
of  Oliver  St.  John,  Cromwell's  solicitor- 
general,  of  the  same  noble  English  family 
that,  a  generation  or  two  later,  produced 
Henry  St.  John,  Lord  Bolingbroke,  the 
brilliant,  unscrupulous  friend  of  Pope  and 
Swift.  Another  of  the  Concord  ministers, 
Rev.  John  Whiting,  was  descended,  through 
his  grandmother,  Elizabeth  St.  John,  wife 
of  Rev.  Samuel  Whiting,  of  Lynn,  from  this 
same  old  English  family,  which,  in  its  long 
pedigree,  counted  for  ancestors  the  Norman 
Conqueror  of  England  and  some  of  his  tur 
bulent  posterity.  He  was,  says  the  epitaph 
over  him  in  the  village  burying-ground,  "  a 
gentleman  of  singular  hospitality  and  gen- 


66  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

erosity,  who  never  detracted  from  the  char 
acter  of  any  man,  and  was  a  universal  lover 
of  mankind.''  In  this  character  some  rep 
resentative  gentleman  of  Concord  has  stood 
in  every  generation  since  the  first  settle 
ment  of  the  little  town. 

The  Munroes  of  Lexington  and  Concord 
are  descended  from  a  Scotch  soldier  of 
Charles  IL's  army,  captured  by  Cromwell 
at  the  battle  of  Worcester  in  1651,  and 
allowed  to  go  into  exile  in  America.  His 
powerful  kinsman,  General  George  Munro, 
who  commanded  for  Charles  at  the  battle 
of  Worcester,  was,  at  the  Restoration,  made 
commander-in-chief  for  Scotland. 

Robert  Cumming,  father  of  Dr.  John 
Cumming,  a  celebrated  Concord  physician, 
was  one  of  the  followers  of  the  first  Preten 
der  in  1715,  and  when  the  Scotch  rebellion 
of  that  year  failed,  Cumming,  with  some  of 
his  friends,  fled  to  New  England,  and  set 
tled  in  Concord  and  the  neighboring  town 
of  Stow. 

Duncan  Ingraham,  a  retired  sea-captain, 
who  had  enriched  himself  in  the  Surinam 
trade,  long  lived  in  Concord,  before  and 
after  the  Revolution,  and  one  of  his  grand- 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.      67 

children  was  Captain  Marryatt,  the  English 
novelist ;  another  was  the  American  naval 
captain,  Ingraham,  who  brought  away  Mar 
tin  Kosta,  a  Hungarian  refugee,  from  the 
clutches  of  the  Austrian  government. 
While  Duncan  Ingraham  was  living  in 
Concord,  a  hundred  years  ago,  a  lad  from 
that  town,  Joseph  Perry,  who  had  gone  to 
sea  with  Paul  Jones,  became  a  high  naval 
officer  in  the  service  of  Catharine  of  Rus 
sia,  and  wrote  to  Dr.  Ripley  from  the  Cri 
mea  in  1786  to  inquire  what  had  become  of 
his  parents  in  Concord,  whom  he  had  not 
seen  or  heard  from  for  many  years.  The 
stepson  of  Duncan  Ingraham,  Tilly  Mer- 
rick,  of  Concord,  who  graduated  at  Cam 
bridge  in  1773,  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Sir  Archibald  Campbell,  when  captured  in 
Boston  Harbor,  that  Scotch  officer  having 
visited  at  the  house  of  Mrs.  Ingraham, 
Merrick's  mother,  while  a  prisoner  in  Con 
cord  Jail.  A  few  years  later  Merrick  was 
himself  captured  twice  on  his  way  to  and 
from  Holland  and  France,  whither  he  went 
as  secretary  or  attache*  to  our  commis 
sioner,  John  Adams.  The  first  time  he  was 
taken  to  London ;  the  second  time  to  Hali- 


68  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

fax,  where,  as  it  happened,  Sir  Archibald 
was  then  in  command  as  Governor  of  Nova 
Scotia.  Young  Merrick  went  presently  to 
the  governor's  quarters,  but  was  refused 
admission  by  the  sentinel,  —  while  parleying 
with  whom,  Sir  Archibald  heard  the  con 
versation,  and  came  forward.  He  at  once 
recognized  his  Concord  friend,  greeted  him 
cordially  with  "  How  do  you  do,  my  little 
rebel?  "  and  after  taking  good  care  of  him, 
in  remembrance  of  his  own  experience  in 
Concord,  procured  Merrick's  exchange  for 
one  of  Burgoyne's  officers,  captured  at  Sar 
atoga.  Returning  to  America  after  the 
war,  Tilly  Merrick  went  into  an  extensive 
business  at  Charleston,  S.  C.,  with  the  son 
of  Duncan  Ingraham  for  a  partner,  and 
there  became  the  owner  of  large  planta 
tions,  worked  by  slaves,  which  he  after 
wards  lost  through  reverses  in  business. 
Coming  back  to  Concord  in  1798,  with  the 
remnants  of  his  South  Carolina  fortune, 
and  inheriting  his  mother's  Concord  estate, 
he  married  a  lady  of  the  Minott  family,  and 
became  a  country  store-keeper  in  his  native 
town.  His  daughter,  Mrs.  Brooks,  was  for 
many  years  the  leader  of  the  antislavery 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     69 

party  in  Concord,  and  a  close  friend  of  the 
Thoreaus,  who  at  one  time  lived  next  door 
to  her  hospitable  house. 

Soon  after  Mr.  Emerson  fixed  his  home 
in  Concord,  in  1834,  a  new  bond  of  connec 
tion  between  the  town  and  the  great  world 
outside  this  happy  valley  began  to  appear, 
—  the  genius  of  that  man  whose  like  has 
not  been  seen  in  America,  nor  in  the  whole 
world  in  our  century  :  — 

"  A  large  and  generous  man,  who,  on  our  moors, 
Built  up  his  thought  (though  with  an  Indian  tongue, 
And  fittest  to  have  sung  at  Persian  feasts), 
Yet  dwelt  among  us  as  the  sage  he  was,  — 
Sage  of  his  days,  —  patient  and  proudly  true  ; 
Whose  word  was  worth  the  world,  whose  heart  was  pure. 
Oh,  such  a  heart  was  his !  no  gate  or  bar  ; 
The  poorest  wretch  that  ever  passed  his  door 
Welcome  as  highest  king  or  fairest  friend." 

This  genius,  in  one  point  of  view  so  solitary, 
but  in  another  so  universal  and  social,  soon 
made  itself  felt  as  an  attractive  force,  and 
Concord  became  a  place  of  pilgrimage,  as  it 
has  remained  for  so  many  years  since. 
When  Theodore  Parker  left  Divinity  Hall, 
at  Cambridge,  in  1836,  and  began  to  preach 
in  Unitarian  pulpits,  he  fixed  his  hopes  on 
Concord  as  a  parish,  chiefly  because  Emer- 


70  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

son  was  living  there.  It  is  said  that  he 
might  have  been  called  as  a  colleague  for 
Dr.  Ripley,  if  it  had  not  been  thought  his 
sermons  were  too  learned  for  the  Christians 
of  the  Nine-Acre  Corner  and  other  outlying 
hamlets  of  the  town.  In  1835-36  Mr.  Al- 
cott  began  to  visit  Mr.  Emerson  in  Con 
cord,  and  in  1840  he  went  there  to  live. 
Margaret  Fuller  and  Elizabeth  Peabody, 
coadjutors  of  Mr.  Alcott  in  his  Boston 
school,  had  already  found  their  way  to  Con 
cord,  where  Margaret  at  intervals  resided, 
or  came  and  went  in  her  sibylline  way. 
Ellery  Channing,  one  of  the  nephews  of  Dr. 
Channing,  the  divine,  took  his  bride,  a  sis 
ter  of  Margaret  Fuller,  to  Concord  in  1843  ; 
and  Hawthorne  removed  thither,  upon 
his  marriage  with  Miss  Peabody's  sister 
Sophia,  in  1842.  After  noticing  what  went 
on  about  him  for  a  few  years,  in  his  seclu 
sion  at  the  Old  Manse,  Hawthorne  thus  de 
scribed  the  attraction  of  Concord,  in  1845  : 

"  It  was  necessary  to  go  but  a  little  way  be 
yond  my  threshold  before  meeting  with  stranger 
moral  shapes  of  men  than  might  have  been  en 
countered  elsewhere  in  a  circuit  of  a  thousand 
miles.  These  hobgoblins  of  flesh  and  blood  were 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.      71 

attracted  thither  by  the  wide-spreading  influence 
of  a  great  original  thinker,  who  had  his  earthly 
abode  at  the  opposite  extremity  of  our  village. 
His  mind  acted  upon  other  minds  of  a  certain 
constitution  with  wonderful  magnetism,  and  drew 
many  men  upon  long  pilgrimages  to  speak  with 
him  face  to  face.  Young  visionaries,  to  whom 
just  so  much  of  insight  had  been  imparted  as  to 
make  life  all  a  labyrinth  around  them,  came  to 
seek  the  clew  that  should  guide  them  out  of  their 
self-involved  bewilderment.  Gray-headed  theo 
rists,  whose  systems,  at  first  air,  had  finally  im 
prisoned  them  in  an  iron  framework,  traveled 
painfully  to  his  door,  not  to  ask  deliverance,  but 
to  invite  the  free  spirit  into  their  own  thralldom. 
People  that  had  lighted  on  a  new  thought,  or  a 
thought  that  they  fancied  new,  came  to  Emerson, 
as  the  finder  of  a  glittering  gem  hastens  to  a 
lapidary  to  ascertain  its  quality  and  value." 

The  picture  here  painted  still  continued 
to  be  true  until  long  after  the  death  of  Tho- 
reau ;  and  the  attraction  was  increased  at 
times  by  the  presence  in  the  village  of 
Hawthorne  himself,  of  Alcott,  and  of  others 
who  made  Concord  their  home  or  their 
haunt.  Thoreau  also  was  resorted  to  by 
pilgrims,  who  came  sometimes  from  long 
distances  and  at  long  intervals,  to  see  and 
talk  with  him. 


72  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

There  was  in  the  village,  too,  a  consular 
man,  for  many  years  the  first  citizen  of 
Concord,  —  Samuel  Hoar,  —  who  made  him 
self  known  abroad  by  sheer  force  of  charac 
ter  and  "  plain  heroic  magnitude  of  mind." 
It  was  of  him  that  Emerson  said,  at  his 
death  in  November,  1856,  — 

"  He  was  a  man  in  whom  so  rare  a  spirit  of 
justice  visibly  dwelt  that  if  one  had  met  him  in 
a  cabin  or  in  a  forest  he  must  still  seem  a  public 
man,  answering  as  sovereign  state  to  sovereign 
state  ;  and  might  easily  suggest  Milton's  picture 
of  John  Bradshaw,  that  he  '  was  a  consul  from 
whom  the  fasces  did  not  depart  with  the  year, 
but  in  private  seemed  ever  sitting  in  judgment 
on  kings.'  He  returned  from  courts  or  con 
gresses  to  sit  down  with  unaltered  humility,  in 
the  church  or  in  the  town-house,  on  the  plain 
wooden  bench,  where  Honor  came  and  sat  down 
beside  him." 

In  his  house  and  in  a  few  others  along  the 
elm-planted  street,  you  might  meet  at  any 
time  other  persons  of  distinction,  beauty,  or 
wit,  —  such  as  now  and  then  glance  through 
the  shining  halls  of  cities,  and,  in  great 
centres  of  the  world's  civilization,  like  Lon 
don  or  Paris,  muster 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.      73 

"  In  solemn  troops  and  sweet  societies," 
which  are  the  ideal  of  poets  and  fair  women, 
and  the  envy  of  all  who  aspire  to  social 
eminence.  Thoreau  knew  the  worth  of  this 
luxury,  too,  though,  as  a  friend  said  of  him, 
"  a  story  from  a  fisher  or  hunter  was  better 
to  him  than  an  evening  of  triviality  in  shin 
ing  parlors,  where  he  was  misunderstood." 

There  were  not  many  such  parlors  in 
Concord,  but  there  was  and  had  constantly 
been  in  the  town  a  learned  and  social  ele 
ment,  such  as  gathers  in  an  old  New  Eng 
land  village  of  some  wealth  and  inherited 
culture.  At  the  head  of  this  circle  —  which 
fell  off  on  one  side  into  something  like  fash 
ion  and  mere  amusement,  on  another  into 
the  activity  of  trade  or  politics,  and  rose," 
among  the  women  especially,  into  art  and 
literature  and  religion  —  stood,  in  Thoreau's 
boyhood  and  youth,  a  grave  figure,  yet  with 
something  droll  about  him,  —  the  parish 
minister  and  county  Nestor,  Dr.  Ezra  Ripley, 
who  lived  and  died  in  the  "  Old  Manse." 

Dr.  Ripley  was  born  in  1751,  in  Wood 
stock,  Conn.,  the  same  town  in  which  Dr. 
Abiel  Holmes,  the  father  of  the  poet 
Holmes,  was  born.  He  entered  Harvard 


74  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

College  in  1772,  came  with  the  students  to 
Concord  in  1775,  when  the  college  build 
ings  at  Cambridge  were  occupied  by  Wash 
ington  and  his  army,  besieging  Boston,  and 
graduated  in  1776.  Among  his  classmates 
were  Governor  Gore,  Samuel  Sewall,  the 
second  chief-justice  of  Massachusetts  of  that 
name,  and  Royal  Tyler,  the  witty  chief -jus 
tice  of  Vermont.  Governor  Gore  used  to 
say  that  in  college  he  was  called  "  Holy 
Ripley,"  from  his  devout  character.  He 
settled  in  Concord  in  1778,  and  at  the  age 
of  twenty-nine  married  the  widow  of  his 
last  predecessor,  Rev.  William  Emerson 
(and  the  daughter  of  his  next  predecessor, 
Rev.  Daniel  Bliss),  who  was  at  their  mar 
riage  ten  years  older  than  her  husband,  and 
had  a  family  of  five  children.  Dr.  Ripley 's 
own  children  were  three  in  number :  the 
Reverend  Samuel  Ripley,  born  May  11, 
1783 ;  Daniel  Bliss  Ripley,  born  August  1, 
1784  ;  and  Miss  Sarah  Ripley,  born  August 
8, 1789.  When  this  daughter  died,  not  long 
after  her  mother,  in  1826,  breaking,  says 
Mr.  Emerson,  "  the  last  tie  of  blood  which 
bound  me  and  my  brothers  to  his  house," 
Dr.  Ripley  said  to  Mr.  Emerson,  "  I  wish 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     75 

you  and  your  brothers  to  come  to  this  house 
as  you  have  always  done.  You  will  not 
like  to  be  excluded  ;  I  shall  not  like  to  be 
neglected."  He  died  himself  in  September, 
1841. 

Of  Dr.  Ripley  countless  anecdotes  are 
told  in  his  parish,  and  he  was  the  best  re 
membered  person,  except  Thoreau  himself, 
who  had  died  in  Concord,  till  Emerson ;  just 
as  his  house,  described  so  finely  by  Haw 
thorne  in  his  "  Mosses,"  is  still  the  best 
known  house  in  Concord.  It  was  for  a 
time  the  home  of  Mr.  Emerson,  and  there, 
it  is  said,  he  wrote  his  first  book,  "Nature," 
concerning  which,  when  it  came  out  anon 
ymously,  the  question  was  asked,  "  Who  is 
the  author  of  *  Nature '  ?  "  The  reply  was, 
of  course,  "  God  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emer 
son."  The  Old  Manse  was  built  about  1766 
for  Mr.  Emerson's  grandfather,  then  minis 
ter  of  the  parish,  and  into  it  he  brought 
his  bride,  Miss  Phebe  Bliss  (daughter  of 
Rev.  Daniel  Bliss,  of  Concord,  and  Phebe 
Walker,  of  Connecticut).  Miss  Mary  Em 
erson,  youngest  child  of  this  marriage,  used 
to  say  "  she  was  in  arms  at  the  battle  of 
Concord,"  because  her  mother  held  her  up, 


76  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

then  two  years  old,  to  see  the  soldiers  from 
her  window  ;  and  from  his  study  window 
her  father  saw  the  fight  at  the  bridge.  It 
was  the  scene  of  many  of  the  anecdotes, 
told  of  Dr.  Ripley,  some  of  which,  gathered 
from  various  sources,  may  here  be  given  ;  it 
was  also,  after  his  death,  one  of  the  resorts 
of  Thoreau,  of  Margaret  Fuller,  of  Ellery 
Channing,  of  Dr.  Hedge,  and  of  the  Tran- 
scendentalists  in  general.  His  parishioners 
to  this  day  associate  Dr.  Ripley 's  form  "with 
whatever  was  grave  and  droll  in  the  old, 
cold,  unpainted,  uncarpeted,  square-pewed 
meeting-house,  with  its  four  iron-gray  dea 
cons  in  their  little  box  under  the  pulpit  ; 
with  Watts's  hymns ;  with  long  prayers, 
rich  with  the  diction  of  ages;  and,  not  less, 
with  the  report  like  musketry  from  the 
movable  seats."  l  One  of  these  "iron-gray 
deacons,"  Francis  Jarvis,  used  to  visit  the 
Old  Manse  with  his  children  on  Sunday 
evenings,  and  his  son,  Dr.  Edward  Jarvis, 
thus  describes  another  side  of  Dr.  Ripley's 
pastoral  character :  — 

1  Emerson's  Sketch  of  Dr.  Ripley.  Hood,  in  his  Music 
for  the  Million,  describes  an  angry  man  as  slamming  a 
door  "  with  a  wooden  damn." 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     77 

"Among  the  very  pleasant  things  connected 
with  the  Sabbaths  in  the  Jarvis  family  were  the 
visits  to  Dr.  Ripley  in  the  evening.  The  doctor 
had  usually  a  small  levee  of  such  friends  as  were 
disposed  to  call.  Deacon  Jarvis  was  fond  of  go 
ing  there,  and  generally  took  with  him  one  of  the 
children  and  his  wife,  when  she  was  able.  There 
were  at  these  levees  many  of  the  most  intelligent 
and  agreeable  men  of  the  town,— Mr.  Samuel 
Hoar,  Mr.  Nathan  Brooks,  Mr.  John  Keyes, 
Deacon  Brown,  Mr.  Pritchard,  Major  Burr,  etc. 
These  were  extremely  pleasant  gatherings.  The 
little  boys  sat  and  listened,  and  remembered  the 
cheerful  and  instructive  conversation.  There 
were  discussions  of  religion  and  morals,  of  poli 
tics  and  philosophy,  the  affairs  of  the  town,  the 
news  of  the  day,  the  religious  and  social  gossip, 
pleasant  anecdotes  and  witty  tales.  All  were  in 
their  best  humor.  Deacon  Jarvis  [adds  his  son], 
did  not  go  to  these  levees  every  Sunday  night, 
though  he  would  have  been  glad  to  do  so,  had  he 
been  less  distrustful.  When  his  children,  who 
had  no  such  scruples,  asked  him  to  go  and  take 
them  with  him,  he  said  he  feared  that  Dr.  Ripley 
would  not  like  to  see  him  so  frequently." 

According  to  Mr.  Emerson,  Dr.  Ripley 
was  "  a  natural  gentleman ;  no  dandy,  but 
courtly,  hospitable,  and  public  spirited ;  his 


78  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

house  open  to  all  men."  An  old  farmer 
who  used  to  travel  thitherward  from  Maine, 
where  Dr.  Ripleyhad  a  brother  settled  in 
the  ministry,  used  to  say  that  "  no  horse 
from  the  Eastern  country  would  go  by  the 
doctor's  gate."  It  was  one  of  the  listeners 
at  his  Sunday  evening  levees,  no  doubt, 
who  said  (at  the  time  when  Dr.  Ripley  was 
preparing  for  his  first  and  last  journey  to 
Baltimore  and  Washington,  in  the  presi 
dency  of  the  younger  Adams)  "  that  a  man 
who  could  tell  a  story  so  well  was  company 
for  kings  and  for  John  Quincy  Adams." 

When  P.  M.,  after  his  release  from  the 
State  Prison,  had  the  effrontery  to  call  on 
Dr.  Ripley,  as  an  old  acquaintance,  as  they 
were  talking  together  on  general  matters, 
his  young  colleague,  Rev.  Mr.  Frost,  came 
in.  The  doctor  presently  said,  "  Mr.  M., 
my  brother  and  colleague,  Mr.  Frost,  has 
come  to  take  tea  with  me.  I  regret  very 
much  the  causes  (very  well  known  to  you), 
which  make  it  impossible  for  me  to  ask  you 
to  stay  and  break  bread  with  us."  Mr. 
Emerson,  his  grandson  (by  Dr.  Ripley's 
marriage  with  the  widow  of  Rev.  William 
Einerson)  relates  that  he  once  went  to  a 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     79 

funeral  with  Dr.  Ripley,  and  heard  him  ad 
dress  the  mourners.  As  they  approached 
the  farm-house  the  old  minister  said  that 
the  eldest  son,  who  was  now  to  succeed  the 
deceased  father  of  a  family  in  his  place  as 
a  Concord  yeoman,  was  in  some  danger  of 
becoming  intemperate.  In  his  remarks  to 
this  son,  he  presently  said,  — 

"  Sir,  I  condole  with  you.  I  knew  your  great 
grandfather ;  when  I  came  to  this  town,  in  1778, 
he  was  a  substantial  farmer  in  this  very  place, 
a  member  of  the  church,  and  an  excellent  citi 
zen.  Your  grandfather  followed  him,  and  was 
a  virtuous  man.  Now  your  father  is  to  be  car 
ried  to  his  grave,  full  of  labors  and  virtues. 
There  is  none  of  that  old  family  left  but  you, 
and  it  rests  with  you  to  bear  up  the  good  name 
and  usefulness  of  your  ancestors.  If  you  fail  — 
Ichabod !  —  the  glory  is  departed.  Let  us  pray." 

He  took  Mr.  Emerson  about  with  him  in 
his  chaise  when  a  boy,  and  in  passing  each 
house  he  would  tell  the  story  of  its  family, 
dwelling  especially  on  the  nine  church- 
members  who  had  made  a  division  in  the 
church  in  the  time  of  his  predecessor ;  every 
one  of  the  nine  having  come  to  bad  fortune 
or  a  bad  end.  "  The  late  Dr.  Gardiner," 


80  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

says  Mr.  Emerson,  "in  a  funeral  sermon 
on  some  parishioner,  whose  virtues  did  not 
readily  come  to  mind,  honestly  said,  '  He 
was  good  at  fires.'  Dr.  Ripley  had  many 
virtues,  and  yet,  even  in  his  old  age,  if  the 
firebell  was  rung,  he  was  instantly  on  horse 
back,  with  his  buckets  and  bag."  He  had 
even  some  willingness,  perhaps  not  equal  to 
the  zeal  of  the  Hindoo  saint,  to  extinguish 
the  Orthodox  fires  of  hell,  which  had  long 
blazed  in  New  England, — so  that  men  might 
worship  God  with  less  fear.  But  he  had 
small  sympathy  with  the  Transcendentalists 
when  they  began  to  appear  in  Concord. 
When  Mr.  Emerson  took  his  friend  Mr.  Al- 
cott  to  see  the  old  doctor,  he  gave  him 
warning  that  his  brilliant  young  kinsman 
was  not  quite  sound  in  the  faith,  and  bore 
testimony  in  particular  against  a  sect  of  his 
own  naming,  called  "  Egomites  "  (from  ego 
and  mitto),  who  "sent  themselves"  on  the 
Lord's  errands  without  any  due  call  thereto. 
Dr.  Channing  viewed  the  "apostles  of  the 
newness  "  with  more  favor,  and  could  par 
don  something  to  the  spirit  of  liberty  which 
was  strong  in  them.  The  occasional  corre 
spondence  between  the  Concord  shepherd  of 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     81 

his  people  and  the  great  Unitarian  preacher 
is  full  of  interest.  In  February,  1839, 
when  he  was  eighty-eight  years  old  and 
weighed  down  with  infirmities,  he  could 
still  lift  up  his  voice  in  testimony.  He 
then  wrote  to  Dr.  Channing :  -«- 

"  Broken  down  with  the  infirmities  of  age,  and 
subject  to  fits  that  deprive  me  of  reason  and  the 
use  of  my  limbs,  I  feel  it  a  duty  to  be  patient 
and  submissive  to  the  will  of  God,  who  is  too 
wise  to  err,  and  too  good  to  injure.  My  mind 
labors  and  is  oppressed,  viewing  the  present  state 
of  Christianity,  and  the  various  speculations, 
opinions,  and  practices  of  the  passing  period. 
Extremes  appear  to  be  sought  and  loved,  and 
their  novelty  gains  attention.  You,  sir,  appear 
to  retain  and  act  upon  the  sentiment  of  the  Latin 
phrase,  — 

" '  Est  modus  in  rebus,  sunt  certi  denique  fines.' 

"The  learned  and  estimable  Norton  appears 
to  me  to  have  weakened  his  hold  on  public  opin 
ion  and  confidence  by  his  petulance  or  pride,  his 
want  of  candor  and  charity." 

Six  years  earlier,  Dr.  Channing  had  writ 
ten  to  Dr.  Ripley  almost  as  if  replying  to 
some  compliment  like  this,  and  expressed 


82  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

himself  thus,  in  a  letter  dated  January  22, 
1833,  — 

"  I  thank  God  for  the  testimony  which  you 
have  borne  to  the  usefulness  of  my  writings. 
Such  approbation  from  one  whom  I  so  much 
venerate,  and  who  understands  so  well  the  wants 
and  signs  of  the  times,  is  very  encouraging  to 
me.  If  I  have  done  anything  towards  manifest 
ing  Christianity  in  its  simple  majesty  and  mild 
glory  I  rejoice,  and  I  am  happy  to  have  contrib 
uted  anything  towards  the  satisfaction  of  your  last 
years.  It  would  gratify  many,  and  would  do 
good,  if,  in  the  quiet  of  your  advanced  age,  you 
would  look  back  on  the  eventful  period  through 
which  you  have  passed,  and  would  leave  behind 
you,  or  give  now,  a  record  of  the  changes  you 
have  witnessed,  and  especially  of  the  progress  of 
liberal  inquiry  and  rational  views  in  religion."  1 

Dr.  Ripley's  prayers  were  precise  and  un- 
doubting  in  their  appeal  for  present  provi- 

1  At  the  date  of  this  letter  Dr.  Ripley  was  not  quite 
eighty-two,  and  he  lived  to  be  more  than  ninety.  Mr. 
Alcott,  who  has  now  passed  the  age  of  eighty-two,  has 
been  for  years  doing  in  some  degree  what  Dr.  Channing 
urged  the  patriarch  of  his  denomination  to  do,  but  which 
the  old  minister  never  found  time  and  strength  for.  It 
is  curious  that  these  two  venerable  men,  whose  united 
life  in  Concord  covers  a  period  of  more  than  a  century, 
both  came  from  Connecticut. 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     83 

dences.  He  prayed  for  rain  and  against  the 
lightning,  "  that  it  may  not  lick  up  our 
spirits  ; "  he  blessed  the  Lord  for  exemp 
tion  from  sickness  and  insanity,  —  "  that 
we  have  not  been  tossed  to  and  fro  until 
the  dawning  of  the  day,  that  we  have  not 
been  a  terror  to  ourselves  and  to  others." 
One  memorable  occasion,  in  the  later  years 
of  his  pastorate,  when  he  had  consented  to 
take  a  young  colleague,  is  often  remembered 
in  his  parish,  now  fifty  years  after  its  date. 
The  town  was  suffering  from  drought,  and 
the  farmers  from  Barrett's  Mill,  Bateman's 
Pond,  and  the  Nine- Acre  Corner  had  asked 
the  minister  to  pray  for  rain.  Mr.  Good 
win  (the  father  of  Professor  Goodwin,  of 
Harvard  University)  had  omitted  to  do  this 
in  his  morning  service,  and  at  the  noon  in 
termission  Dr.  Ripley  was  reminded  of  the 
emergency  by  the  afflicted  farmers.  He 
told  them  courteously  that  Mr.  Goodwin's 
garden  lay  on  the  river,  and  perhaps  he  had 
not  noticed  how  parched  the  uplands  were  ; 
but  he  entered  the  pulpit  that  afternoon 
with  an  air  of  resolution  and  command. 
Mr.  Goodwin,  as  usual,  offered  to  relieve 
the  doctor  of  the  duty  of  leading  in  prayer, 


84  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

but  the  old  shepherd,  as  Mr.  Emerson  says, 
"rejected  his  offer  with  some  humor,  and 
with  an  air  that  said  to  all  the  congrega 
tion,  '  This  is  no  time  for  you  young  Cam 
bridge  men  ;  the  affair,  sir,  is  getting  se 
rious  ;  I  will  pray  myself.'  "  He  did  so, 
and  with  unusual  fervor  demanded  rain  for 
the  languishing  corn  and  the  dry  grass  of 
the  field.  As  the  story  goes,  the  afternoon 
opened  fair  and  hot,  but  before  the  dwellers 
in  Nine- Acre  Corner  and  the  North  Quar 
ter  reached  their  homes  a  pouring  shower 
rewarded  the  gray-haired  suppliant,  and  re 
minded  Concord  that  the  righteous  are  not 
forsaken.  Another  of  Mr.  Emerson's  anec 
dotes  bears  on  this  point :  — 

"  One  August  afternoon,  when  I  was  in  his  hay- 
field,  helping  him,  with  his  man,  to  rake  up  his 
hay,  I  well  remember  his  pleading,  almost  re 
proachful  looks  at  the  sky,  when  the  thunder- 
gust  was  coming  up  to  spoil  his  hay.  He  raked 
very  fast,  then  looked  at  the  cloud,  and  said, 
'  We  are  in  the  Lord's  hand, —  mind  your  rake, 
George !  we  are  in  the  Lord's  hand  ; '  and  seemed 
to  say,  « You  know  me ;  this  field  is  mine,  —  Dr. 
Ripley's,  thine  own  servant.'  " 

In  his  later  years  Dr.  Ripley  was  much 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.     85 

distressed  by  a  schism  in  his  church,  which 
drew  off  to  a  Trinitarian  congregation  sev 
eral  of  his  oldest  friends  and  parishioners. 
Among  the  younger  members  who  thus  se 
ceded,  seventy  years  ago,  were  the  maiden 
aunts  of  Thoreau,  Jane  and  Maria,  —  the 
last  of  whom,  and  the  last  of  the  name  in 
America,  has  died  recently,  as  already  men 
tioned.  Thoreau  seceded  later,  but  not  to 
the  "Orthodox"  church,  —  as  much  against 
the  wish  of  Dr.  Ripley,  however,  as  if  he 
had.  In  later  years,  Thoreau's  church  (of 
the  Sunday  Walkers)  was  recognized  in  the 
village  gossip ;  so  that  when  I  first  spent 
Sunday  in  Concord,  and  asked  my  landlord 
what  churches  there  were,  he  replied,  "  The 
Unitarian,  the  Orthodox,  and  the  Walden 
Pond  Association."  To  the  latter  he  pro 
fessed  to  belong^  and  said  its  services  con 
sisted  in  walking  on  Sunday  in  the  Walden 
woods.  Dr.  Ripley  would  have  viewed  such 
rites  with  horror,  but  they  have  now  be 
come  common.  His  Old  Manse,  which 
from  1842  to  1846  was  occupied  by  Haw 
thorne,  was  for  twenty  years  (1847-1867) 
the  home  of  Mrs.  Sarah  Ripley,  that  sweet 
and  learned  lady,  and  has  since  been  the 


86  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

dwelling-place  of  her  children,  the  grand 
children  of  Dr.  Ripley.  Near  by  stands  now 
the  statue  of  the  Concord  Minute-Man  of 
1775,  marking  the  spot  to  which  the  Mid 
dlesex  farmers  came 

"  In  sloven  dress  and  broken  rank," 
and  where  they  stood  when  in  unconscious 
heroism  they 

"  Fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world," 

and  drove  back  the  invading  visitor  from 
their  doorsteps  and  cornfields. 

Dr.  Ripley,  however,  seldom  repelled  a 
visitor  or  an  invader,  unless  he  came  from 
too  recent  an  experience  in  the  state  prison, 
or  offered  to  "break  out"  his  path  on  a 
Sunday,  when  he  had  fancied  himself  too 
much  snow-bound  to  go  forth  to  his  pulpit. 
The  anecdote  is  characteristic,  if  not  wholly 
authentic.  One  Sunday,  after  a  severe 
snow-storm,  his  neighbor,  the  great  farmer 
on  Ponkawtassett  Hill,  half  a  mile  to  the 
northward  of  the  Old  Manse,  turned  out 
his  ox-teams  and  all  his  men  and  neighbors 
to  break  a  path  to  the  meeting-house  and 
the  tavern.  Wallowing  through  the  drifts, 
they  had  got  as  far  as  Dr.  Ripley's  gate, 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.      87 

while  the  good  parson,  snugly  blocked  in 
by  a  drift  completely  filling  his  avenue  of 
ash-trees,  thought  of  nothing  less  than  of 
going  out  to  preach  that  day.  The  long 
team  of  oxen,  with  much  shouting  and 
stammering  from  the  red-faced  farmer,  was 
turned  out  of  the  road  and  headed  up  the 
avenue,  when  Dr.  Ripley,  coming  to  his 
parsonage  door,  and  commanding  silence, 
began  to  berate  Captain  B.  for  breaking  the 
Sabbath  and  the  roads  at  one  stroke,  —  im 
plying,  if  not  asserting,  that  he  did  it  to 
save  time  and  oxen  for  his  Monday's  work. 
Angered  at  the  ingratitude  of  his  minister, 
the  stammering  farmer  turned  the  ten  yoke 
of  cattle  round  in  the  doctor's  garden,  and 
drove  on  to  the  village,  leaving  the  parson 
to  shovel  himself  out  and  get  to  meeting 
the  best  way  he  could.  Meanwhile,  the 
teamsters  sat  in  the  warm  bar-room  at  the 
tavern,  and  cheered  themselves  with  punch, 
flip,  grog,  and  toddy,  instead  of  going  to 
hear  Dr.  Ripley  hold  forth ;  and  when  he 
had  returned  to  his  parsonage  they  paraded 
their  oxen  and  sleds  back  again,  past  his 
gate,  with  much  more  shouting  than  at 
first.  This  led  to  a  long  quarrel  between 


88  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

minister  and  parishioner,  in  course  of  which, 
one  day,  as  the  doctor  halted  his  chaise  in 
front  of  the  farmer's  house  on  the  hill,  the 
stammering  captain  came  forward,  a  peck 
measure  in  his  hand,  with  which  he  had 
been  giving  his  oxen  their  meal,  and  began 
to  renew  the  unutterable  grievance.  Wax 
ing  warm,  as  the  doctor  admonished  him 
afresh,  he  smote  with  his  wooden  measure 
on  the  shafts  of  the  chaise,  until  his  gentle 
wife,  rushing  forth,  called  on  the  neighbors 
to  stop  the  fight  which  she  fancied  was 
going  on  between  the  charioteer  of  the  Lord 
and  the  foot-soldier. 

Despite  these  outbursts,  and  his  habitual 
way  of  looking  at  all  things  "from  the 
parochial  point  of  view,"  as  Emerson  said 
of  him,  he  was  also  a  courteous  and  liberal- 
minded  man,  as  the  best  anecdotes  of  him 
constantly  prove.  He  was  the  sovereign  of 
his  people,  managing  the  church,  the  schools, 
the  society  meetings,  and,  for  a  time,  the 
Lyceum,  as  he  thought  fit.  The  lecturers, 
as  well  as  the  young  candidates  for  school- 
keeping  —  Theodore  Parker,  Edward  Ever 
ett,  and  the  rest  —  addressed  themselves  to 
him,  and  when  he  met  Webster,  then  the 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.      89 

great  man  of  Massachusetts,  it  was  on  equal 
terms. 

Daniel  Webster  was  never  a  lyceum  lec 
turer  in  Concord,  and  he  did  not  often  try 
cases  there,  but  was  sometimes  consulted 
in  causes  of  some  pecuniary  magnitude. 
When  Humphrey  Barrett  died  (whose  man 
agement  of  his  nephew's  estate  will  be 
mentioned  in  the  next  chapter),  his  heir 
by  will  (a  young  man  without  property, 
until  he  should  inherit  the  large  estate  be 
queathed  him),  found  it  necessary  to  employ 
counsel  against  the  heirs-at-law,  who  sought 
to  break  the  will.  His  attorney  went  to 
Mr.  Webster  in  Boston  and  related  the 
facts,  adding  that  his  client  could  not  then 
pay  a  large  fee,  but  might,  if  the  cause  were 
gained,  as  Mr.  Webster  thought  it  would 
be.  "  You  may  give  me  one  hundred  dollars 
as  a  retainer,"  said  Webster,  "  and  tell  the 
young  man,  from  me,  that  when  I  win  his 
case  I  shall  send  him  a  bill  that  will  make 
his  hair  stand  on  end."  It  so  happened, 
however,  that  Webster  was  sent  to  the  Sen 
ate,  and  the  case  was  won  by  his  partner. 

In  the  summer  of  1843,  while  Thoreau 


90  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

was  living  at  Staten  Island,  Webster  visited 
Concord  to  try  an  important  case  in  the 
county  court,  which  then  held  sessions 
there.  This  was  the  "  Wyman  Trial," 
long  famous  in  local  traditions,  Webster 
and  Choate  being  both  engaged  in  the  case, 
and  along  with  them  Mr.  Franklin  Dexter 
and  Mr.  Rockwood  Hoar,  the  latter  a 
young  lawyer,  who  had  been  practicing  in 
the  Middlesex  courts  for  a  few  years,  where 
his  father,  Mr.  Samuel  Hoar,  was  the  leader 
of  the  bar.  Judge  Allen  (Charles  Allen  of 
Worcester)  held  the  court,  and  the  eminent 
array  of  counsel  just  named  was  for  the  de 
fense. 

The  occasion  was  a  brilliant  one,  and 
made  a  great  and  lasting  sensation  in  the 
village.  Mr.  Webster  and  his  friends  were 
entertained  at  the  houses  of  the  chief  men 
of  Concord,  and  the  villagers  crowded  the 
court-house  to  hear  the  arguments  and  the 
colloquies  between  the  counsel  and  the 
court.  Webster  was  suffering  from  his 
usual  summer  annoyance,  the  "  hay  ca 
tarrh,"  or  "rose  cold,"  which  he  humor 
ously  described  afterward  in  a  letter  to  a 
friend  in  Concord :  — 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.       91 

"  You  know  enough  of  my  miserable  catarrh. 
Its  history,  since  I  left  your  hospitable  roof,  is 
not  worth  noting.  There  would  be  nothing 
found  in  it,  either  of  the  sublime  or  the  beauti 
ful  ;  nothing  fit  for  elegant  description  or  a  touch 
of  sentiment.  Not  that  it  has  not  been  a  great 
thing  in  its  way ;  for  I  think  the  sneezing  it  has 
occasioned  has  been  truly  transcendental.  A 
fellow-sufferer  from  the  same  affliction,  who  lived 
in  Cohasset,  was  asked,  the  other  day,  what  in 
the  world  he  took  for  it  ?  His  reply  was  that  he 
'  took  eight  handkerchiefs  a  day.'  And  this,  I 
believe,  is  the  approved  mode  of  treatment; 
though  the  doses  here  mentioned  are  too  few  for 
severe  cases.  Suffice  it  to  say,  my  dear  lady, 
that  either  from  a  change  of  air,  or  the  progress 
of  the  season,  or,  what  is  more  probable,  from 
the  natural  progress  of  the  disease  itself,  I  am 
much  better  than  when  I  left  Concord,  and  I 
propose  to  return  to  Boston  to-day,  feeling,  or 
hoping,  that  I  may  now  be  struck  off  the  list  of 
invalids." 

Notwithstanding  this  affliction,  Mr.  Web 
ster  made  himself  agreeable  to  the  ladies  of 
Concord,  old  and  young,  and  even  the  little 
girls,  like  Louisa  Alcott,  went  to  the  court 
house  to  see  and  hear  him.  He  was  present 
at  a  large  tea-party  given  by  Mrs.  R.  W. 


92  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

Emerson  in  his  honor,  and  he  renewed  his 
old  acquaintance  with  the  Dunbars  and  Tho- 
reaus.  Mr.  Emerson,  writing  to  Thoreau 
September  8,  1843,  said,  briefly,  "  You  will 
have  heard  of  our  4  Wyman  Trial,'  and  the 
stir  it  made  in  the  village.  But  the  Cliff 
and  Walden,  which  know  something  of  the 
railroad,  knew  nothing  of  that;  not  a  leaf 
nodded  ;  not  a  pebble  fell ;  —  why  should  I 
speak  of  it  to  you  ?  "  Thoreau  was  indeed 
interested  in  it,  and  in  the  striking  person 
ality  of  Webster.  To  his  mother  he  wrote 
from  Staten  Island  (August  29,  1843)  :  — 

"  I  should  have  liked  to  see  Daniel  Webster 
walking  about  Concord ;  I  suppose  the  town 
shook,  every  step  he  took.  But  I  trust  there 
were  some  sturdy  Concordians  who  were  not 
tumbled  down  by  the  jar,  but  represented  still 
the  upright  town.  Where  was  George  Minott? 
he  would  not  have  gone  far  to  see  him.  Uncle 
Charles  should  have  been  there  ;  —  he  might  as 
well  have  been  catching  cat-naps  in  Concord  as 
anywhere.  And,  then,  what  a  whetter-up  of  his 
memory  this  event  would  have  been!  You'd 
have  had  all  the  classmates  again  in  alphabetical 
order  reversed,  —  <  and  Seth  Hunt  and  Bob 
Smith  —  and  he  was  a  student  of  my  father's  — 
and  where 's  Put  now  ?  and  I  wonder  —  you  — 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.       93 

if  Henry  's  been  to  see  George  Jones  yet  ?     A 
little  account  with  Stow  —  Balcolm  —  Bigelow 

—  poor,  miserable  t-o-a-d  (sound  asleep).     I  vow 

—  you  —  what  noise  was  that  ?  saving  grace  — 
and  few  there  be.     That 's  clear  as  preaching  — 
Easter  Brooks  —  morally  depraved  —  how  charm 
ing  is  divine  philosophy — 'some  wise  and  some 
otherwise  —  Heighho  !     (Sound   asleep   again.) 
Webster 's  a  smart  fellow  —  bears  his  age  well. 
How  old  should  you  think  he  was  ?  you  —  does 
he  look  as  if  he  were  two  years  younger  than  I  ? '  " 

This  uncle  was  Charles  Dunbar,  of  course, 
who  was  in  fact  two  years  older  than  Web 
ster,  and,  like  him,  a  New  Hampshire  man. 
He  and  his  sisters  —  the  mother  and  the 
aunt  of  Henry  Thoreau  —  had  known  Web 
ster  in  his  youth,  when  he  was  a  poor 
young  lawyer  in  New  Hampshire ;  and  the 
acquaintance  was  kept  up  from  time  to 
time  as  the  years  brought  them  together. 
Whenever  Webster  passed  a  day  in  Con 
cord,  as  he  did  nearly  every  year  from 
1843  to  1850,  he  would  either  call  on  Miss 
Dunbar,  or  she  would  meet  him  at  tea  in 
the  house  of  Mr.  Cheney,  a  college  classmate 
of  Mr.  Emerson,  whom  he  usually  visited ; 
and  whose  garden  was  a  lovely  plot,  orna- 


94  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

mented  with  great  elm  trees,  on  the  bank 
of  the  Musketaquid.  Mrs.  Thoreau  was 
often  included  in  these  friendly  visits  ;  and 
it  was  of  this  family,  as  well  as  of  the  Em- 
ersons,  Hoars,  and  Brookses,  no  doubt,  that 
Webster  was  thinking  when  he  sadly  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Cheney  his  last  letter,  less  than  a 
year  before  his  death  in  1852.  In  this 
note,  dated  at  Washington,  November  1, 
1851,  when  he  was  Secretary  of  State  under 
Fillmore,  Mr.  Webster  said :  — 

"  I  have  very  much  wished  to  see  you  all,  and 
in  the  early  part  of  October  seriously  contem 
plated  going  to  Concord  for  a  day.  But  I  was 
hindered  by  circumstances,  and  partly  deterred 
also  by  changes  which  have  taken  place.  My 
valued  friend,  Mr.  Phinney  (of  Lexington),  is 
not  living ;  and  many  of  those  whom  I  so  highly 
esteemed,  in  your  beautiful  and  quiet  village, 
have  become  a  good  deal  estranged,  to  my  great 
grief,  by  abolitionism,  free-soilism,  transcenden 
talism,  and  other  notions,  which  I  cannot  (but) 
regard  as  so  many  vagaries  of  the  imagination. 
These  former  warm  friends  would  have  no  pleas 
ure,  of  course,  in  intercourse  with  one  of  old-fash 
ioned  opinions.  Nevertheless,  dear  Mrs.  Che 
ney,  if  I  live  to  see  another  summer,  I  will  make 
a  visit  to  your  house,  and  talk  about  former 
times  and  former  things." 


CONCORD  AND  ITS  FAMOUS  PEOPLE.       95 

He  never  came;  for  in  June,  1852,  the 
Whig  convention  at  Baltimore  rejected  his 
name  as  a  Presidential  candidate,  and  he 
went  home  to  Marshfield  to  die.  The  tone 
of  sadness  in  this  note  was  due,  in  part, 
perhaps,  to  the  eloquent  denunciation  of 
Webster  by  Mr.  Emerson  in  a  speech  at 
Cambridge  in  1851,  and  to  the  unequivocal 
aversion  with  which  Webster's  contempo 
rary,  the  first  citizen  of  Concord,  Samuel 
Hoar,  spoke  of  his  7th  of  March  speech,  and 
the  whole  policy  with  which  Webster  had 
identified  himself  in  those  dreary  last  years 
of  his  life.  Mr.  Hoar  had  been  sent  by  his 
State  in  1846  to  protest  in  South  Carolina 
against  the  unconstitutional  imprisonment 
at  Charleston  of  colored  seamen  from  Mas 
sachusetts  ;  and  he  had  been  driven  by 
force  from  the  State  to  which  he  went  as  an 
envoy.  But,  although  Webster  knew  the 
gross  indignity  of  the  act,  and  introduced 
into  his  written  speech  in  March,  1850,  a 
denunciation  of  it,  he  did  not  speak  this 
out  in  the  Senate,  nor  did  it  appear  in  all 
the  authorized  editions  of  the  speech.  He 
could  hardly  expect  Mr.  Hoar  to  welcome 
him  in  Concord  after  he  had  uttered  his 


96  HENRY  D.  THOREAU, 

willingness  to  return  fugitive  slaves,  but 
forgot  to  claim  reparation  for  so  shameful 
an  affront  to  Massachusetts  as  the  Concord 
Cato  had  endured. 

Mr.  Webster  was  attached  to  Concord  — 
as  most  persons  are  who  have  ever  spent 
pleasant  days  there  —  and  used  to  compli 
ment  his  friend  on  his  house  and  garden  by 
the  river  side.  Looking  out  upon  his  great 
trees  from  the  dining-room  window,  he 
once  said  :  "  I  am  in  the  terrestrial  par 
adise,  and  I  will  prove  it  to  you  by  this. 
America  is  the  finest  continent  on  the  globe, 
the  United  States  the  finest  country  in 
America,  Massachusetts  the  best  State  in 
the  Union,  Concord  the  best  town  in  Mas 
sachusetts,  and  my  friend  Cheney's  field  the 
best  acre  in  Concord."  This  was  an  opin 
ion  so  like  that  often  expressed  by  Henry 
Thoreau,  that  one  is  struck  by  it.  Indeed, 
the  devotion  of  Thoreau  to  his  native  town 
was  so  marked  as  to  provoke  opposition. 
"  Henry  talks  about  Nature,"  said  Madam 
Hoar  (the  mother  of  Senator  Hoar,  and 
daughter  of  Roger  Sherman  of  Connecticut^ 
"  just  as  if  she'd  been  born  and  brought  up 
in  Concord." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  EMBATTLED  FAKMEES. 

IT  was  not  the  famous  lawyers,  the  godly 
ministers,  the  wealthy  citizens,  nor  even  the 
learned  ladies  of  Concord,  who  interested 
Henry  Thoreau  specially,  —  but  the  sturdy 
farmers,  each  on  his  hereditary  acres,  bat 
tling  with  the  elements  and  enjoying  that 
open-air  life  which  to  Thoreau  was  the  only 
existence  worth  having.  As  his  best  biog 
rapher,  Ellery  Channing,  says  :  "  He  came 
to  see  the  inside  of  every  farmer's  house 
and  head,  his  pot  of  beans,  and  mug  of  hard 
cider.  Never  in  too  much  hurry  for  a  dish 
of  gossip,  he  could  sit  out  the  oldest  fre 
quenter  of  the  bar-room,  and  was  alive  from 
top  to  toe  with  curiosity." 

Concord,  in  our  day,  and  still  more  in 
Thoreau's  childhood,  was  dotted  with  fre 
quent  old  farm-houses,  of  the  ample  and 
picturesque  kind  that  bespeaks  antiquity 
and  hospitality.  In  one  such  he  was  born, 

7 


98  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

though  not  one  of  the  oldest  or  the  best. 
He  was  present  at  the  downfall  of  several 
of  these  ancient  homesteads,  in  whose  date 
and  in  the  fortunes  of  their  owners  for  suc 
cessive  generations,  he  took  a  deep  interest ; 
and  still  more  in  their  abandoned  orchards 
and  door-yards,  where  the  wild  apple  tree 
and  the  vivacious  lilac  still  flourished. 

To  show  what  sort  of  men  these  Concord 
farmers  were  in  the  days  when  their  his 
torical  shot  was  fired,  let  me  give  some  an 
ecdotes  and  particulars  concerning  two  of 
the  original  family  stocks,  —  the  Hosmers, 
who  first  settled  in  Concord  in  1635,  with 
Bulkeley  and  Willard,  the  founders  of  the 
town ;  and  the  Barretts,  whose  first  ances 
tor,  Humphrey  Barrett,  came  over  in  1639. 
James  Hosmer,  a  clothier  from  Hawkhurst 
in  Kent,  with  his  wife  Ann  (related  to  Ma 
jor  Simon  Willard,  that  stout  Kentishman, 
Indian  trader  and  Indian  fighter,  who  bought 
of  the  Squaw  Sachem  the  township  of  Con 
cord,  six  miles  square),  two  infant  daugh 
ters,  and  two  maid-servants,  came  from 
London  to  Boston  in  the  ship  "  Elizabeth," 
and  the  next  year  built  a  house  on  Concord 
Street,  and  a  mill  on  the  town  brook. 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS  99 

From  him  descended  James  Hosmer,  who 
was  killed  at  Sudbury  in  1658,  in  an  Indian 
fight,  Stephen,  his  great-grandson,  a  famous 
surveyor,  and  Joseph,  his  great-great-grand 
son,  one  of  the  promoters  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  who  had  a  share  in  its  first  fight  at 
Concord  Bridge.  Joseph  Hosmer  was  the 
son  of  a  Concord  farmer,  who,  in  1743, 
seceded  from  the  parish  church,  because 
Rev.  Daniel  Bliss,  the  pastor,  had  said  in  a 
sermon  (as  his  opponents  averred),  "  that  it 
was  as  great  a  sin  for  a  man  to  get  an  estate 
by  honest  labor,  if  he  had  not  a  single  aim 
at  the  glory  of  God,  as  to  get  it  by  gaming 
at  cards  or  dice."  What  this  great-grand 
father  of  Emerson  did  say,  a  century  before 
the  Transcendental  epoch,  was  this,  as  he 
declared :  "  If  husbandmen  plow  and  sow 
that  they  may  be  rich,  and  live  in  the  pleas 
ures  of  this  world,  and  appear  grand  before 
men,  they  are  as  far  from  true  religion  in 
their  plowing,  sowing,  etc.,  as  men  are  that 
game  for  the  same  purpose."  Thomas  Hos 
mer,  being  a  prosperous  husbandman,  per 
haps  with  a  turn  for  display,  took  offense, 
and  became  a  worshipper  at  what  was  called 
the  "Black  Horse  Church,"  —  a  seceding 


100  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

conventicle  which  met  at  the  tavern  with 
the  sign  of  the  Black  Horse,  near  where 
the  Concord  Library  now  stands.  Joseph 
Hosmer,  his  boy,  was  known  at  the  village 
school  as  "  the  little  black  colt,"  —  a  lad 
of  adventurous  spirit,  with  dark  eyes  and 
light  hair,  whose  mother,  Prudence  Hos 
mer,  would  repeat  old  English  poetry  until 
all  her  listeners  but  her  son  were  weary. 
When  he  was  thirty-nine  years  old,  married 
and  settled,  a  farmer  and  cabinet-maker, 
there  was  a  convention  in  the  parish  church 
to  consider  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  the  doings 
of  General  Gage  in  Boston,  and  the  advice 
of  Samuel  Adams  and  John  Hancock  to  re 
sist  oppression.  Daniel  Bliss,  the  leading 
lawyer  and  leading  Tory  in  Concord,  eldest 
son  of  Parson  Bliss,  and  son-in-law  of  Col 
onel  Murray,  of  Rutland,  Vt.,  the  chief 
Tory  of  that  region,  made  a  speech  in  this 
convention  against  the  patriotic  party.  He 
was  a  graceful  and  fluent  speaker,  a  hand 
some  man,  witty,  sarcastic,  and  popular, 
but  with  much  scorn  for  the  plain  people. 
He  painted  in  effective  colors  the  power 
of  the  mother  country  and  the  feebleness 
of  the  colonies  ;  he  was  elegantly  dressed, 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  101 

friendly  in  his  manner,  but  discouraging  to 
the  popular  heart,  and  when  he  sat  down,  a 
deep  gloom  seemed  to  settle  on  the  assem 
bly.  His  brother-in-law,  Parson  Emerson, 
an  ardent  patriot,  if  present,  was  silent. 
From  a  corner  of  the  meeting-house  there 
rose  at  last  a  man  with  sparkling  eyes, 
plainly  dressed  in  butternut  brown,  who  be 
gan  to  speak  in  reply  to  the  handsome 
young  Tory,  at  first  slowly  and  with  hesi 
tation,  but  soon  taking  fire  at  his  own 
thoughts,  he  spoke  fluently,  in  a  strain 
of  natural  eloquence,  which  gained  him  the 
ear  and  applause  of  the  assembly.  A  del 
egate  from  Worcester,  who  sat  near  Mr. 
Bliss,  noticed  that  the  Tory  was  discom 
posed,  biting  his  lip,  frowning,  and  pound 
ing  with  the  heel  of  his  silver-buckled  shoe. 
"Who  is  the  speaker?"  he  asked  of  Bliss. 
"  Hosmer,  a  Concord  mechanic,"  was  the 
scornful  reply.  "  Then  how  does  he  come 
by  his  English  ? "  "Oh,  he  has  an  old 
mother  at  home,  who  sits  in  her  chimney- 
corner  and  reads  and  repeats  poetry  all  day 
long;"  adding  in  a  moment,  "He  is  the 
most  dangerous  rebel  in  Concord,  for  he 
has  all  the  young  men  at  his  back,  and 


102  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

where  he  leads  the  way  they  will  surely 
follow." 

Four  months  later,  in  April,  1775,  this 
Concord  mechanic  made  good  the  words  of 
his  Tory  townsman,  for  it  was  his  speech  to 
the  minute-men  which  goaded  them  on  to 
the  fight.  After  forming  the  regiment  as 
adjutant,  he  addressed  them,  closing  with 
these  words :  "  I  have  often  heard  it  said 
that  the  British  boasted  they  could  march 
through  our  country,  laying  waste  every 
village  and  neighborhood,  and  that  we 
would  not  dare  oppose  them,  —  and  I  be 
gin  to  believe  it  is  true"  Then  turning  to 
Major  Buttrick,  who  commanded,  and  look 
ing  off  from  the  hill-side  to  the  village,  from 
which  a  thick  smoke  was  rising,  he  cried, 
"  Will  you  let  them  burn  the  town  down  ?  " 
whereupon  the  sturdy  major,  who  had  no 
such  intention,  ordered  his  men  to  march ; 
and  when,  a  few  minutes  later,  the  British 
fired  on  his  column  of  companies,  the  Acton 
men  at  the  head,  he  sprang  from  the  ground 
shouting,  "  Fire,  fellow-soldiers,  for  God's 
sake  fire !  "  and  discharged  his  own  piece 
at  the  same  instant.  The  story  has  often 
been  told,  but  will  bear  repetition.  Tho- 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.     103 

reau  heard  it  in  1835  from  the  lips  of  Emer 
son,  as  he  pronounced  the  centennial  dis 
course  in  honor  of  the  town's  settlement 
and  history  ;  but  he  had  read  it  and  heard 
it  a  hundred  times  before,  from  his  earliest 
childhood.  Mr.  Emerson  added,  after  de 
scribing  the  fight :  — 

"  These  poor  farmers  who  came  up,  that  day, 
to  defend  their  Dative  soil,  acted  from  the  sim 
plest  instincts  ;  they  did  not  know  it  was  a  deed 
of  fame  they  were  doing.  These  men  did  not 
babble  of  glory ;  they  never  dreamed  their  chil 
dren  would  contend  which  had  done  the  most. 
They  supposed  they  had  a  right  to  their  corn  and 
their  cattle,  without  paying  tribute  to  any  but 
their  own  governors.  And  as  they  had  no  fear 
of  man,  they  yet  did  have  a  fear  of  God.  Cap 
tain  Charles  Miles,  who  was  wounded  in  the  pur 
suit  of  the  enemy,  told  my  venerable  friend  (Dr. 
Kipley),  who  sits  by  me,  *  that  he  went  to  the 
services  of  that  day  with  the  same  seriousness 
and  acknowledgment  of  God,  which  he  carried  to 
church.' " 

Humphrey  Barrett,  fifth  in  descent  from 
the  original  settler,  was  born  in  1752,  on 
the  farm  his  ancestors  had  owned  ever  since 
1640,  and  was  no  doubt  in  arms  at  Concord 
Fight  in  1775.  His  biographer  says :  — 


104  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

"  Some  persons  slightly  acquainted  with  him 
in  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  judged  him  to  be  un 
social,  cold,  and  indifferent,  but  those  most  ac 
quainted  with  him  knew  him  to  be  precisely  the 
reverse.  The  following  acts  of  his  life  make  ap 
parent  some  traits  of  his  character.  A  negro,  by 
the  name  of  Caesar  Robbins,  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  getting  all  the  wood  for  his  family  use  for 
many  years  from  Mr.  Barrett's  wood-lot  near  by 
him ;  this  being  done  with  the  knowledge  and 
with  the  implied  if  not  the  express  consent  of  the 
owner.  Mr.  Barrett  usually  got  the  wood  for 
his  own  use  from  another  part  of  his  farm ;  but 
on  one  occasion  he  thought  he  would  get  it  from 
the  lot  by  Caesar's.  He  accordingly  sent  two 
men  with  two  teams,  with  directions  to  cut  only 
hard  wood.  The  men  had  been  gone  but  a  few 
hours  when  Cassar  came  to  Mr.  Barrett's  house, 
his  face  covered  with  sweat,  and  in  great  agita 
tion,  and  says,  '  Master  Barrett,  I  have  come  to 
let  you  know  that  a  parcel  of  men  and  teams 
have  broke  into  our  wood-lot,  and  are  making 
terrible  destruction  of  the  very  best  trees,  and 
unless  we  do  something  immediately  I  shall  be 
ruined.'  Mr.  Barrett  had  no  heart  to  resist  this 
appeal  of  Caesar's  ;  he  told  him  not  to  be  alarmed, 
for  he  would  see  that  he  was  not  hurt,  and  would 
put  the  matter  right.  He  then  wrote  an  order 
to  his  men  to  cut  no  more  wood,  but  to  come  di« 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  105 

rectly  home  with  their  teams,  and  sent  the  order 
by  Caesar."  l 

The  biographer  of  Mr.  Barrett,  who  was, 
also  his  attorney  and  legal  adviser,  goes  on 
to  say :  — 

"  A  favorite  nephew  who  bore  his  name,  and 
whose  guardian  he  was,  died  under  age  in  1818, 
leaving  a  large  estate,  and  no  relatives  nearer 
than  uncle  and  aunt  and  the  children  of  de 
ceased  aunts.  Mr.  Barrett  believed  that  the 
estate  in  equity  ought  to  be  distributed  equally 
between  the  uncle  and  aunt  and  the  children 
of  deceased  aunts  by  right  of  representation.2 
And  although  advised  that  such  was  not  the 
law,  he  still  insisted  upon  having  the  question 
carried  before  the  Supreme  Court  for  decision ; 

1  This  princely  anecdote  is  paralleled,  in  its  way,  by 
one  told  of  Gershom  Bradford,  of  Duxbury,  son  of  Colo 
nel  Gam.  Bradford,  the  friend  of  Washington  and  Kos- 
ciusko,  but  himself  a  plain   Old  Colony  farmer.     Once 
walking  in  his  woods,  he  saw  a  man  cutting  down  a  fine 
tree ;  he  concealed  himself  that  the  man  might  not  see 
him,  and  went  home.     When  asked  why  he  did  not  stop 
the  trespasser,  he  replied,  "  Could  not  the  poor  man  have 
a  tree  ?  "     Gershom  Bradford  was  a  descendant  of  Gov 
ernor  Bradford,  the  Pilgrim,  and   uncle  of  Mrs.  Sarah 
Ripley,  of  Concord. 

2  This  would,  of  course,  diminish  his  own  share,  as 
the  law  then  stood,  from  one  half  the  estate  to  one  fourth, 
or  less. 


106  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

and  when  the  court  decided  against  his  opinion, 
he  carried  out  his  own  views  of  equity  by  dis 
tributing  the  portion  that  fell  to  him  according  to 
his  opinion  of  what  the  law  ought  to  be.  After 
he  had  been  fully  advised  that  the  estate  would 
be  distributed  in  a  manner  he  thought  neither 
equitable  nor  just,  he  applied  to  the  writer  to 
make  out  his  account  as  guardian  ;  furnishing  the 
evidence,  as  he  believed,  of  the  original  amount 
of  all  his  receipts  as  such  guardian.  I  made  the 
account,  charging  him  with  interest  at  six  per 
cent,  on  all  sums  from  the  time  of  receipt  till  the 
time  of  making  the  account.  Mr.  Barrett  took 
the  account  for  examination,  and  soon  returned 
it  with  directions  to  charge  him  with  compound 
interest,  saying  that  he  believed  he  had  realized 
as  much  as  that.  I  accordingly  made  the  account 
conform  to  his  directions.  He  then  wished  me 
to  present  this  account  to  the  party  who  claimed 
half  the  estate,  and  ask  him  to  examine  it  with 
care  and  see  if  anything  was  omitted.  This  was 
done,  and  no  material  omission  discovered,  and 
no  objection  made.  Mr.  Barrett  then  said  that 
he  had  always  kept  all  the  property  of  his 
ward  in  a  drawer  appropriated  for  the  purpose  ; 
that  he  made  the  amount  of  property  in  the 
drawer  greater  than  the  balance  of  the  account ; 
and  (handing  to  me  the  contents  of  the  drawer \ 
he  wished  me  to  ascertain  the  precise  sum  to 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  107 

which  it  amounted.  I  found  that  it  exceeded  the 
balance  of  the  account  by  $3,221.59.  He  then 
told  me,  in  substance,  that  he  was  quite  unwilling 
to  have  so  large  an  amount  of  property  go  where 
it  was  in  danger  of  being  distributed  inequitably, 
and  particularly  as  he  was  confident  he  had  dis 
closed  every  source  from  which  he  had  realized 
any  property  of  his  ward,  and  also  the  actual 
amount  received  ;  but,  as  he  knew  not  how  it  got 
into  the  drawer,  and  had  intended  all  the  prop 
erty  there  to  go  to  his  nephew,  he  should  not  feel 
right  to  retain  it,  and  therefore  directed  me  to 
add  it  to  the  amount  of  the  estate,  —  which  was 
done."  1 

Conceive  a  community  in  which  such  char 
acters  were  common,  and  imagine  whether 
the  claim  of  King  George  and  the  fine  gen 
tlemen  about  him,  to  tax  the  Americans 
without  their  own  consent  would  be  likely  to 
succeed !  I  find  in  obscure  anecdotes  like 
this  sufficient  evidence  that  if  John  Hamp- 
den  had  emigrated  to  Massachusetts  when 
he  had  it  in  mind,  he  would  have  found 

1  "These  facts,"  says  his  biographer,  whom  I  knew 
well,  "  show  clearly,  I  think,  not  only  that  his  love  of 
right  was  stronger  than  his  love  of  money,  but  that  he 
would  rather  make  any  sacrifice  of  property  than  leave 
a  doubt  in  his  own  mind  whether  justice  had  been  done 
to  others." 


108  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

men  like  himself  tilling  their  own  acres  in 
Concord.  The  Barretts,  from  their  name, 
may  have  been  Normans,  but,  like  Hamp- 
den,  the  Hosmers  were  Saxons,  and  held 
land  in  England  before  William  the  Con 
queror.  When  Major  Hosmer,  who  was 
adjutant,  and  formed  the  line  of  the  regi 
ment  that  returned  the  British  fire  at 
Concord  Bridge,  had  an  estate  to  settle 
about  1785,  the  heir  to  which  was  supposed 
to  be  in  England,  he  emploj^ed  an  agent, 
who  was  then  visiting  London,  to  notify  the 
heir,  and  also  desired  him  to  go  to  the 
Heralds'  Office  and  ascertain  what  coat-of- 
arms  belonged  to  any  branch  of  the  Hosmer 
family.  When  the  agent  (who  may  have 
been  Mr.  Tilly  Merrick,  of  Concord,  John 
Adams's  attache*  in  Holland),  returned  to 
America,  after  reporting  his  more  important 
business  to  Major  Hosmer,  he  added,  — 

"  I  called  at  the  Heralds'  Office  in  London, 
and  the  clerk  said,  *  There  was  no  coat-of-arms 
for  you,  and,  if  you  were  an  Englishman  you 
would  not  want  one  ;  for  (he  said)  there  were  Hos 
mers  in  Kent  long  before  the  Conquest ;  and  at  the 
battle  of  Hastings,  the  men  of  Kent  were  the  van 
guard  of  King  Harold.' " 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  109 

If  Major  Hosmer's  ancestors  failed  to 
drive  back  the  invaders  then,  their  descend 
ants  made  good  the  failure  in  Concord  seven 
centuries  later. 

Thoreau's  favorite  walk,  as  he  tells  us, — 
the  pathway  toward  Heaven,  —  was  along 
the  old  Marlborough  road,  west  and  south 
west  from  Concord  village,  through  deep 
woods  in  Concord  and  in  Sudbury.  To 
reach  this  road  he  passed  by  the  great  Hos- 
mer  farm-house,  built  by  the  old  major 
already  mentioned,  in  1760  or  thereabout, 
and  concerning  which  there  is  a  pretty 
legend  that  Thoreau  may  have  taken  with 
him  along  the  Marlborough  road.  In  1758, 
young  Jo.  Hosmer,  "  the  little  black  colt," 
drove  to  Marlborough  one  autumn  day  with 
a  load  of  furniture  he  had  made  for  Jon 
athan  Barnes,  a  rich  farmer,  and  town  clerk 
in  thrifty  Marlborough.  He  had  received 
the  money  for  his  furniture,  and  was  stand 
ing  on  the  doorstep,  preparing  to  go  home, 
when  a  young  girl,  Lucy  Barnes,  the  daugh 
ter  of  the  house,  ran  up  to  him  and  said, 
*  Concord  woods  are  dark,  and  a  thunder 
storm  is  coming  up ;  you  had  better  stay 
all  night."  "  Since  you  ask  me,  I  will," 


110  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

was  the  'reply,  and  the  visit  was  often  re 
peated  in  the  next  few  months.  But  when 
he  asked  farmer  Jonathan  for  his  daughter, 
the  reply  was,  — 

"  Concord  plains  are  barren  soil.  Lucy  had 
better  marry  her  cousin  John,  whose  father  will 
give  him  one  of  the  best  farms  in  Marlborough, 
with  a  good  house  on  it,  and  Lucy  can  match 
his  land  acre  for  acre." 

Joseph  returned  from  that  land  of  Egypt, 
and  like  a  wise  youth  took  the  hint,  and 
built  a  house  of  his  own,  planting  the  elm 
trees  that  now  overshadow  it,  after  a  hun 
dred  and  twenty  years.  After  the  due  in 
terval  he  went  again  to  Marlborough,  and 
found  Lucy  Barnes  in  the  September  sun 
shine,  gathering  St.  Michael's  pears  in  her 
father's  garden.  Cousin  John  was  married, 
by  this  time,  to  another  damsel.  Miss  Lucy 
was  bent  on  having  her  own  way  and  her 
own  Joseph ;  and  so  Mr.  Barnes  gave  his 
consent.  They  were  married  at  Christmas, 
1761 ;  and  Lucy  came  home  behind  him  on 
his  horse,  through  the  same  Concord  woods. 
She  afterwards  told  her  youngest  son,  with 
Borne  pique :  — 

"  When  my  brother  Jonathan  was  married,  and 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.          Ill 

went  to  New  Hampshire,  twenty  couples  on 
horseback  followed  them  to  Haverhill,  on  the 
Merrimac,  but  when  your  father  and  I  were 
married,  we  came  home  alone  through  these  dark 
Concord  woods."1 

The  son  of  this  lively  Lucy  Hosmer,  Rufns 
Hosmer,  of  Stow,  was  a  classmate,  at  Cam 
bridge,  of  Washington  Allston,  the  late 
Chief  Justice  Shaw,  and  Dr.  Charles  Low 
ell,  father  of  Lowell  the  poet.  They  grad 
uated  in  1798,  and  Dr.  Lowell  afterwards 
wrote :  — 

"  I  can  recall  with  peculiar  pleasure  a  vacation 
passed  in  Concord  in  my  senior  year,  which 
Loammi  Baldwin,  Lemuel  Shaw,  Washington 
Allston,  and  myself  spent  with  Rufus  Hosmer  at 
his  father's  house.  I  recall  the  benign  face  of 
Major  Hosmer,  as  he  stood  in  the  door  to  receive 
us,  with  his  handsome  daughter-in-law  (the  wife 
of  Capt.  Cyrus  Hosmer)  on  his  arm.  There 
was  a  charming  circle  of  young  people  then  liv 
ing  in  Concord,  and  we  boys  enjoyed  this  very 

1  Lucy  Barnes,  daughter  of  Jonathan  and  Rachel 
Barnes  of  Marlborough,  was  born  July  7,  1742,  married 
Joseph  Hosmer,  of  Concord,  December  24,  1761,  and 
died  in  Concord,  ,  .  Her  brother  was  Rev. 

Jonathan  Barnes,  born  in  1749,  graduated  at  Harvard 
College,  in  1770,  and  settled  as  a  minister  in  Hillsborough, 
N.  H.,  where  he  died  in  1805. 


112  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

much ;  but  we  liked  best  of  all  to  stay  at  home 
and  listen  to  the  Major's  stories.  It  was  very 
pleasant  to  have  a  rainy  day  come  for  this,  and 
hard  to  tell  which  seemed  the  happier,  he  or  we." 

Forty  years  afterward,  in  1838,  Dr.  Low 
ell's  son,  James  Russell  Lowell,  coming 
under  college  discipline,  was  sent  to  Con 
cord  to  spend  a  similar  summer  vacation, 
and  wrote  his  class  poem  in  that  town. 

Major  Hosmer  died  in  1821,  at  the  age 
of  eighty-five.  Mr.  Samuel  Hoar,  long  the 
leader  of  the  Middlesex  County  bar,  who 
knew  him  in  his  later  life,  once  said, — 

"  In  two  respects  he  excelled  any  one  I  have 
ever  known  ;  he  was  more  entirely  free  from 
prejudice,  and  also  the  best  reader  of  men.  So 
clear  was  his  mind  and  so  strong  his  reasoning 
power,  that  I  would  have  defied  the  most  elo 
quent  pleader  at  the  bar  to  have  puzzled  him,  no 
matter  how  skillfully  he  concealed  the  weak 
points  of  the  case.  I  can  imagine  him  listening 
quietly,  and  saying  in  his  slow  way,  '  It 's  a  pity 
so  many  fine  words  should  be  wasted,  for,  you 
see,  the  man 's  on  the  wrong  side.' " 

Another  old  lawyer  of  Concord,  who 
first  saw  Major  Hosmer  when  he  was  a 
child  of  ten,  and  the  Major  was  sixty  years 
old,  said, — 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  113 

v 

"  I  then  formed  an  opinion  of  him  in  two  re 
spects  that  I  never  altered :  First,  that  he  had 
the  handsomest  eyes  I  ever  saw ;  second,  those 
eyes  saw  the  inside  of  my  head  as  clearly  as  they 
did  the  outside." 

He  was  for  many  years  sheriff  of  the 
county,  and  it  was  the  habit  of  the  young 
lawyers  in  term-time  to  get  round  his  chair 
and  ask  his  opinion  about  their  cases.  Such 
wa»  his  knowledge  of  the  common  law,  and 
so  well  did  he  know  the  judges  and  jury 
men,  that  when  he  said  to  Mr.  Hoar,  "  I 
fear  you  will  lose  your  case,"  that  gentle 
man  said,  "  from  that  moment  I  felt  it  lost, 
for  I  never  knew  him  to  make  a  wrong 
guess."  He  was  a  Federalist  of  the  old 
school,  and  in  his  eyes  Alexander  Hamilton 
was  the  first  man  in  America.  His  son 
held  much  the  same  opinion  of  Daniel 
Webster. 

Near  by  Major  Hosmer's  farm-house 
stood  the  old  homestead  and  extensive  farm 
buildings  of  the  Lee  family,  who  at  the  be 
ginning  of  the  Revolution  owned  one  of  the 
two  or  three  great  farms  in  Concord.  This 
estate  has  been  owned  and  sold  in  one  par 
cel  of  about  four  hundred  acres  ever  since 


114  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

it  was  first  occupied  by  Henry  Woodhonse 
about  1650.  It  lies  between  the  two  rivers 
Assabet  and  Musketaquid,  and  includes 
Nahshawtuc,  or  Lee's  Hill,  on  which,  in 
early  days,  was  an  Indian  village.  The 
Lees  inherited  it  from  the  original  owner, 
and  held  it  for  more  than  one  hundred 
years,  though  it  narrowly  escaped  confis 
cation  in  1775,  its  owner  being  a  Tory. 
Early  in  the  present  century  it  fell,,  by 
means  of  a  mortgage,  into  the  hands  of 
"  old  Billy  Gray  "  (the  founder  of  the  for 
tunes  that  for  two  or  three  generations  have 
been  held  in  the  Gray  family  of  Boston), 
was  by  him  sold  to  Judge  Fay,  of  Cam 
bridge,  and  by  him,  in  1822,  conveyed  to 
his  brother-in-law,  Joseph  Barrett,  of  Con 
cord,  a  distant  cousin  of  the  Humphrey 
Barrett,  mentioned  elsewhere.  Joseph  Bar 
rett  had  been  one  of  Major  Hosmer's  depu 
ties,  when  the  old  yeoman  was  sheriff,  but 
now  turned  his  attention  to  farming  his 
many  acres,  and  deserves  mention  here  as 
one  of  the  Concord  farmers  of  two  genera 
tions  after  the  battle,  among  whom  Henry 
Thoreau  grew  up.  Indeed,  the  Lee  Farm 
was  one  of  his  most  accustomed  haunts, 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.     115 

since  the  river  flowed  round  it  for  a  mile 
or  two,  and  its  commanding  hill-top  gave 
a  prospect  toward  the  western  and  north 
western  mountains,  Wachusett  and  Monad- 
noc  chief  among  the  beautiful  brotherhood, 
whom  Thoreau  early  saluted  with  a  dithy- 
rambic  verse :  — 

11  With  frontier  strength  ye  stand  your  ground, 
With  grand  content  ye  circle  round, 
(Tumultuous  silence  for  all  sound), 
Ye  distant  nursery  of  rills, 
Monadnoc  and  the  Peterhoro  hills ; 


But  special  I  remember  thee, 
Wachusett,  who,  like  me, 
Standest  alone  without  society; 
Thy  far  blue  eye 
A  remnant  of  the  sky." 

Lee's  Hill  (which  must  be  distinguished 
from  Lee's  Cliff,  three  miles  further  up  the 
main  river),  was  the  centre  of  this  farm, 
and  almost  of  the  township  itself,  and  Squire 
Barrett,  while  he  tilled  its  broad  acres  (or 
left  them  untilled),  might  be  called  the 
centre  of  the  farmers  of  his  county.  He 
was  for  some  years  president  of  the  Mid 
dlesex  Agricultural  Society  (before  which, 
in  later  years,  Emerson,  and  Thoreau,  and 
Agassiz  gave  addresses),  and  took  the  prize 


116  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

in  the  plowing-match  at  its  October  cattle- 
show,  holding  his  own  plow,  and  driving 
his  oxen  himself.  Descending  from  the 
committee-room  in  dress  coat  and  ruffled 
shirt,  he  found  his  plow-team  waiting  for 
him,  but  his  rivals  in  the  match  already 
turning  their  furrows.  Laying  off  his  coat, 
and  fortifying  himself  with  a  pinch  of  mac- 
caboy,  while,  as  his  teamster  vowed,  "  that 
nigh-ox  had  his  eye  on  the  'Squire  from  the 
time  he  hove  in  sight,  ready  to  start  the 
minute  he  took  the  plow-handles,"  —  then 
stepping  to  the  task,  six  feet  and  one  inch 
in  height,  and  in  weight  two  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds,  the  'Squire  began,  and  before 
the  field  was  plowed  he  had  won  the  pre 
mium.  He  was  one  of  the  many  New  Eng 
land  yeomen  we  have  all  known,  who  gave 
the  lie  to  the  common  saying  about  the  stur 
dier  bulk  and  sinew  of  our  beer-drinking 
cousins  across  the  water.  'Squire  Barrett 
could  lift  a  barrel  of  cider  into  a  cart,  and 
once  carried  on  his  shoulders,  up  two  flights 
of  stairs,  a  sack  containing  eight  bushels  of 
Indian  corn,  which  must  have  weighed  more 
than  four  hundred  pounds.  He  was  a  good 
horseman,  an  accomplished  dancer,  and  in 


TEE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  117 

the  hayfield  excelled  in  the  graceful  sweep 
of  his  scythe  and  the  flourish  of  his  pitch 
fork. 

In  course  of  time  (1840)  Mr.  Alcott, 
with  his  wife  (a  daughter  of  Colonel  May, 
of  Boston),  and  those  daughters  who  have 
since  become  celebrated,  came  to  live  in  the 
Hosmer  cottage  not  far  from  'Squire  Bar 
rett's,  and  under  the  very  eaves  of  Major 
Hosmer's  farm-house,  to  which  in  1761  came 
the  fair  and  willful  Lucy  Barnes.  The 
portly  and  courtly  'Squire,  who  knew  Colo 
nel  May,  came  to  call  on  his  neighbors,  and 
had  many  a  chat  with  Mrs.  Alcott  about  her 
Boston  kindred,  the  Mays,  Sewalls,  Salis- 
burys,  etc.  His  civility  was  duly  returned 
by  Mrs.  Alcott,  who,  when  'Squire  Barrett 
was  a  candidate  for  State  Treasurer  in  1845, 
was  able,  by  letters  to  her  friends  in  Bos 
ton,  to  give,  him  useful  support.  He  was 
chosen,  and  held  the  office  till  his  death  in 
1849,  when  Thoreau  had  just  withdrawn 
from  his  Walden  hermitage,  and  was  pub 
lishing  his  first  book,  "  A  Week  on  the 
Concord  and  Merrimack." 

Thoreau's  special  friend  among  the  far 
mers  was  another  character,  Edmund  Hos- 


118  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

mer,  a  scion  of  the  same  prolific  Hosmer 
stock,  who  died  in  1881.  Edmund  Hosmer, 
with  Mr.  Alcott,  George  Curtis  and  his 
brother  Burrill,  and  other  friends,  helped 
Thoreau  raise  the  timbers  of  his  cabin  in 
1845,  and  was  often  his  Sunday  visitor  in 
the  hermitage.  Of  him  it  is  that  mention 
is  made  in  "  Walden,"  as  follows :  — 

"  On  a  Sunday  afternoon,  if  I  chanced  to  be 
at  home,  I  heard  the  crunching  of  the  snow,  made 
by  the  step  of  a  long-headed  farmer,  who  from 
far  through  the  woods  sought  my  house,  to  have 
a  social  '  crack ; '  one  of  the  few  of  his  vocation 
who  are  <  men  on  their  farms  ; '  who  donned  a 
frock  instead  of  a  professor's  gown,  and  is  as  ready 
to  extract  the  moral  out  of  church  or  state  as  to 
haul  a  load  of  manure  from  his  barn-yard.  We 
talked  of  rude  and  simple  times,  when  men  sat 
about  large  fires  in  cold,  bracing  weather,  with 
clear  heads ;  and  when  other  dessert  failed,  we 
tried  our  teeth  on  many  a  nut  which  wise  squir 
rels  have  long  since  abandoned,  —  for  those  which 
have  the  thickest  shells  are  commonly  empty." 

Edmund  Hosmer,  who  was  a  friend  of 
Mr.  Emerson  also,  and  of  whom  George 
Curtis  and  his  brother  hired  land  which 
they  cultivated  for  a  time,  has  been  cele- 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  119 

brated  in  prose  and  verse  by  other  Concord 
authors.  I  suppose  it  was  he  of  whom 
Emerson  wrote  thus  in  his  apologue  of 
Saadi,  many  years  ago  :  — 

"  Said  Saadi,  —  When  I  stood  before 
Hassan  the  camel-driver's  door, 
I  scorned  the  fame  of  Timour  brave,— 
Timour  to  Hassan  was  a  slave. 
In  every  glance  of  Hassan's  eye 
I  read  rich  years  of  victory. 
And  I,  who  cower  mean  and  small 
In  the  frequent  interval 
When  wisdom  not  with  me  resides, 
Worship  Toil's  wisdom  that  abides. 
I  shunned  his  eyes  —  the  faithful  man's, 
I  shunned  the  toiling  Hassan's  glance." 

Edmund  Hosmer  was  also,  in  George 
Curtis's  description  of  a  conversation  at  Mr. 
Emerson's  house  in  1845,  "  the  sturdy  far 
mer  neighbor,  who  had  bravely  fought  his 
way  through  inherited  embarrassments  to 
the  small  success  of  a  New  England  hus 
bandman,  and  whose  faithful  wife  had  seven 
times  merited  well  of  her  country."  And 
it  may  be  that  he  was  Ellery  Channing's 

"  Spicy  farming  sage, 

Twisted  with  heat  and  cold  and  cramped  with  age, 
Who  grunts  at  all  the  sunlight  through  the  year, 
And  springs  from  bed  each  morning  with  a  cheer. 


120  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

Of  all  his  neighbors  he  can  something  tell, 
'T  is  had,  whate'er,  we  know,  and  like  it  well ! 
The  bluebird's  song  he  hears  the  first  in  spring,  — 
Shoots  the  last  goose  bound  south  on  freezing  wing." 

Hosmer  might  have  sat,  also,  for  the  more 
idyllic  picture  of  the  Concord  farmer, 
which  Charming  has  drawn  in  his  "  New 
England  "  :  — 

"  This  man  takes  pleasure  o'er  the  crackling  fire, 
His  glittering  axe  subdued  the  monarch  oak; 
He  earned  the  cheerful  blaze  by  something  higher 
Than  pensioned  blows.  —  he  owned  the  tree  he  stroke, 
And  knows  the  value  of  the  distant  smoke, 
When  he  returns  at  night,  his  labor  done, 
Matched  in  his  action  with  the  long  day's  sun." 

Near  the  small  farm  of  Edmund  Hosmer, 
when  Mr.  Curtis  lived  with  him  and  some 
times  worked  on  his  well-tilled  acres,  lay 
a  larger  farm,  which,  about  the  beginning 
of  Thoreau's  active  life,  was  brought  from 
neglect  and  barrenness  into  high  cultivation 
by  Captain  Abel  Moore,  another  Concord 
farmer,  and  one  of  the  first,  in  this  part  of 
the  country,  to  appreciate  the  value  of  our 
bog -meadows  for  cultivation  by  ditching 
and  top-dressing  with  the  sand  which  Na 
ture  had  so  thoughtfully  ridged  up  in  hills 
close  by.  Under  the  name  of  "Captain 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  121 

Hardy,"  Emerson  celebrated  this  achieve 
ment  of  his  townsman,  upon  which  the  hun 
dreds  who  in  summer  strolled  to  the  School 
of  Philosophy  in  Mr.  Alcott's  orchard,  gazed 
with  admiration,  —  bettered  as  it  had  been 
by  the  thirty  years'  toil  and  skill  bestowed 
upon  it  since  by  Captain  Moore's  son  and 
grandson.  Emerson  said  :  — 

"  Look  across  the  fence  into  Captain  Hardy's 
land.  There  's  a  musician  for  you  who  knows 
how  to  make  men  dance  for  him  in  all  weathers, 
—  all  sorts  of  men,  —  Paddies,  felons,  farmers, 
carpenters,  painters,  —  yes,  and  trees,  and  grapes, 
and  ice,  and  stone,  —  hot  days,  cold  days.  Beat 
that  true  Orpheus  lyre  if  you  can.  He  knows 
how  to  make  men  sow,  dig,  mow,  and  lay  stone 
wall  ;  to  make  trees  bear  fruit  God  never  gave 
them,  and  foreign  grapes  yield  the  juices  of 
France  and  Spain,  on  his  south  side.  He  saves 
every  drop  of  sap,  as  if  it  were  his  blood.  See 
his  cows,  his  horses,  his  swine !  And  he,  the 
piper  that  plays  the  jig  they  all  must  dance,  biped 
and  quadruped,  is  the  plainest,  stupidest  harle 
quin,  in  a  coat  of  no  colors.  His  are  the  woods, 
the  waters,  hills,  and  meadows.  With  one  blast 
of  his  pipe  he  danced  a  thousand  tons  of  gravel 
from  yonder  blowing  sand-heap  to  the  bog-mead 
ow,  where  the  English  grass  is  waving  over 


122  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

thirty  acres  ;  with  another,  he  winded  away  sixty 
head  of  cattle  in  the  spring,  to  the  pastures  of 
Peterboro'  on  the  hills." 

Such  were  and  are  the  yeomen  of  Con 
cord,  among  whom  Thoreau  spent  his  days, 
a  friend  to  them  and  they  to  him,  though 
each  sometimes  spoke  churlishly  of  the 
other.  He  surveyed  their  wood-lots,  laid 
out  their  roads,  measured  their  fields  and 
pastures  for  division  among  the  heirs  when 
a  husbandman  died,  inspected  their  riv 
ers  and  ponds,  and  exchanged  informa 
tion  with  them  concerning  the  birds,  the 
beasts,  insects,  flowers,  crops,  and  trees. 
Their  yearly  Cattle  Show  in  October  was 
his  chief  festival,  —  one  of  the  things  he  re 
gretted,  when  living  on  the  edge  of  New 
York  Bay,  and  sighing  for  Fairhaven  and 
White  Pond.  Without  them  the  landscape 
of  his  native  valley  would  not  have  been  so 
dear  to  his  eyes,  and  to  their  humble  and 
perennial  virtues  he  owed  more  inspiration 
than  he  would  always  confess. 

He  read  in  the  crabbed  Latin  of  those 
old  Roman  farmers,  Cato,  Varro,  and  musi 
cally-named  Columella,  and  fancied  the 
farmers  of  Concord  were  daily  obeying 


THE  EMBATTLED  FARMERS.  123 

Cato's  directions,  who  in  turn  was  but  re 
peating  the  maxims  of  a  more  remote  antiq 
uity. 

"  I  see  the  old,  pale-faced  farmer  walking  be 
side  his  team,  with  contented  thoughts,"  he  says, 
"  for  the  five  thousandth  time.  This  drama  every 
day  in  the  streets ;  this  is  the  theatre  I  go  to. 
.  .  .  Human  life  may  be  transitory  and  full  of 
trouble,  but  the  perennial  mind,  whose  survey 
extends  from  that  spring  to  this,  from  Columella 
to  Hosmer,  is  superior  to  change.  I  will  iden 
tify  myself  with  that  which  did  not  die  with  Colu 
mella,  and  will  not  die  with  Hosmer." 

Note.  —  The  account  of  "  Captain  Hardy  "  was  copied 
by  Channing  from  Emerson's  Journal  into  the  first  bio 
graphy  of  Thoreau,  without  the  name  of  the  author ;  and 
so  was  credited  by  me  to  Thoreau  in  a  former  edition  of 
this  book. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD. 

ALTHOUGH  Henry  Thoreau  would  have 
been,  in  any  place  or  time  of  the  world's 
drama,  a  personage  of  note,  it  has  already 
been  observed,  in  regard  to  his  career  and  his 
unique  literary  gift,  that  they  were  affected, 
and  in  some  sort  fashioned  by  the  influ 
ences  of  the  very  time  and  place  in  which  he 
found  himself  at  the  opening  of  life.  It  was 
the  sunrise  of  New  England  Transcendent 
alism  in  which  he  first  looked  upon  the 
spiritual  world ;  when  Carlyle  in  England, 
Alcott,  Emerson,  and  Margaret  Fuller  in 
Massachusetts,  were  preparing  their  con 
temporaries  in  America  for  that  modern 
Renaissance  which  has  been  so  fruitful,  for 
the  last  forty  years,  in  high  thought,  vital 
religion,  pure  literature,  and  great  deeds. 
And  the  place  of  his  birth  and  breeding, 
the  home  of  his  affections,  as  it  was  the 
Troy,  the  Jerusalem,  and  the  Rome  of  his 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      125 

imagination,  was  determined  by  Providence 
to  be  that  very  centre  and  shrine  of  Tran 
scendentalism,  the  little  village  of  Concord, 
which  would  have  been  saved  from  oblivion 
by  his  books,  had  it  no  other  title  to  re 
membrance.  Let  it  be  my  next  effort,  then, 
to  give  some  hint  —  not  a  brief  chronicle 
—  of  that  extraordinary  age,  not  yet  ended 
(often  as  they  tell  us  of  its  death  and  epi 
taph),  now  known  to  all  men  as  the  Tran 
scendental  Period.  We  must  wait  for  after- 
times  to  fix  its  limits  and  determine  its  dawn 
and  setting ;  but  of  its  apparent  beginning 
and  course,  one  cycle  coincided  quite  closely 
with  the  life  of  Thoreau.  He  was  born  in 
July,  1817,  when  Emerson  was  entering 
college  at  Cambridge,  and  Carlyle  was 
wrestling  "  with  doubt,  fear,  unbelief,  mock 
ery,  and  scoffing,  in  agony  of  spirit,"  at 
Edinburgh.  He  died  in  May,  1862,  when 
the  distinctly  spiritual  and  literary  era 
of  Transcendentalism  had  closed,  its  years 
of  preparation  were  over,  and  it  had  en 
tered  upon  the  conflict  of  political  regen 
eration,  for  which  Thoreau  was  constantly 
sounding  the  trumpet.  In  these  forty-five 
years,  —  a  longer  period  than  tte  age  of  Per- 


126  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

icles,  or  of  the  Medici,  or  of  Queen  Eliza 
beth,  —  New  England  Transcendentalism 
rose,  climbed,  and  culminated,  leaving  re 
sults  that,  for  our  America,  must  be  com 
pared  with  those  famous  eras  of  civiliza 
tion.  Those  ages,  in  fact,  were  well-nigh 
lost  upon  us,  until  Channing,  Emerson,  Tho- 
reau,  Margaret  Fuller,  and  their  fellowship, 
brought  us  into  communication  with  the 
Greek,  the  Italian,  and  the  noble  Eliza 
bethan  revivals  of  genius  and  art.  We  had 
been  living  under  the  Puritan  reaction, 
modified  and  politically  fashioned  by  the 
more  humane  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  while  the  freedom-breathing,  but 
half -barbarizing  influences  of  pioneer  life  in 
a  new  continent,  had  also  turned  aside  the 
full  force  of  English  and  Scotch  Calvinism. 
It  is  common  to  trace  the  so-called  Tran 
scendentalism  of  New  England  to  Carlyle 
and  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  in  the 
mother-country,  and  to  Goethe,  Richter,  and 
Kant  in  Germany;  and  there  is  a  certain 
outward  affiliation  of  this  sort,  which  can 
not  be  denied.  But  that  which  in  our  spir 
itual  soil  gave  root  to  the  foreign  seeds  thus 
wafted  hither  ward,  was  a  certain  inward 


TEE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      127 

tendency  of  high  Calvinism  and  its  coun 
terpart,  Quakerism,  always  welling  forth  in 
the  American  colonies.  Now  it  inspired 
Cotton,  Wheelwright,  Sir  Harry  Vane,  and 
Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson,  in  Massachu 
setts  ;  now  William  Penn  and  his  quaint 
brotherhood  on  the  Delaware;  now  Jon 
athan  Edwards  and  Sarah  Pierpont,  in 
Connecticut;  and,  again,  John  Woolman, 
the  wandering  Friend  of  God  and  man,  in 
New  Jersey,  Nicholas  Oilman,  the  convert 
of  Whitefield,  in  New  Hampshire,  and  Sam 
uel  Hopkins,  the  preacher  of  disinterested 
benevolence,  in  Rhode  Island,  held  forth 
this  noble  doctrine  of  the  Inner  Light.  It 
is  a  gospel  peculiarly  attractive  to  poets, 
so  that  even  the  loose-girt  Davenant,  who 
would  fain  think  himself  the  left-hand  son 
of  Shakespeare,  told  gossiping  old  Aubrey 
that  he  believed  the  world,  after  a  while, 
would  settle  into  one  religion,  "  an  ingeni 
ous  Quakerism," —  that  is,  a  faith  in  divine 
communication  that  would  yet  leave  some 
scope  for  men  of  wit  like  himself.  How 
truly  these  American  Calvinists  and  Qua 
kers  prefigured  the  mystical  part  of  Concord 
philosophy,  may  be  seen  by  a  few  of  their 
sayings. 


128  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

Jonathan  Edwards,  in  1723,  when  he  was 
twenty  years  old,  and  the  fair  saint  of  his 
adoration  was  fifteen,  thus  wrote  in  his 
diary  what  he  had  seen  and  heard  of  Sarah 
Pierpont :  — 

"  There  is  a  young  lady  in  New  Haven  who 
is  beloved  of  that  Great  Being  who  made  and 
rules  the  world  ;  and  there  are  certain  seasons 
in  which  this  Great  Being,  in  some  way  or  other 
invisible,  comes  to  her  and  fills  her  mind  with 
exceeding  sweet  delight,  and  she  hardly  cares  for 
anything  except  to  meditate  on  Him.  Therefore, 
if  you  present  all  the  world  before  her,  with  the 
richest  of  its  treasures,  she  disregards  -it,  and 
cares  not  for  it,  and  is  unmindful  of  any  pain  or 
affliction.  She  has  a  strange  sweetness  in  her 
mind,  and  a  singular  purity  in  her  affections ;  is 
most  just  and  conscientious  in  all  her  conduct ; 
and  you  could  not  persuade  her  to  do  anything 
wrong  or  sinful,  if  you  would  give  her  all  the 
world,  lest  she  should  offend  this  Great  Being. 
She  will  sometimes  go  about  from  place  to  place 
singing  sweetly,  and  seems  to  be  always  full  of 
joy  and  pleasure,  and  no  one  knows  for  what. 
She  loves  to  be  alone  walking  in  the  fields  and 
groves,  and  seems  to  have  some  one  invisible  al 
ways  conversing  with  her." 

Nicholas  Oilman,  the  parish  minister  of 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.       129 

little  Durham,  in  New  Hampshire, — being 
under  concern  of  mind  for  his  friend  White- 
field,  and  the  great  man  of  New  England, 
at  that  time,  Sir  William  Pepperell,  just 
setting  forth  for  the  capture  of  Louisburg 
—  wrote  to  them  in  March,  1745,  —  to  Sir 
William  thus  :  — 

"  Do  you  indeed  love  the  Lord  ?  do  you  make 
the  Lord  your  Guide  and  Counselor  in  ye  affair  ? 
If  you  have  a  Soul,  great  as  that  Hero  David  of 
old,  you  will  ask  of  the  Lord,  and  not  go  till  he 
bid  you  :  David  would  not.  If  you  are  sincerely 
desirous  to  know  and  do  your  duty  in  that  and 
every  other  respect,  and  seek  of  God  in  Faith, 
you  shall  know  that,  and  everything  else  needful, 
one  thing  after  another,  as  fast  as  you  are  pre 
pared  for  it.  But  God  will,  doubtless,  hum 
ble  such  as  leave  him  out  of  their  Schemes,  as 
though  his  Providence  was  not  at  all  concerned 
in  the  matter  —  whereas  his  Blessing  is  all  in 
all." 

To  Whitefield,  Oilman  wrote  in  the  same 
vein,  on  the  same  day :  — 

"  Are  you  sufficiently  sure  that  his  call  is  from 

above,  that  he  was  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost  to 

this  Expedition  ?     Would  it  be  no  advantage  to 

his  Estate  to  win  the  place  ?    May  he  not  have  a 

9 


130  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

prospect  of  doubling  his  Wealth  and  Honours,  if 
crowned  with  Success?  What  Demonstration 
has  he  given  of  being  so  entirely  devoted  to  the 
Lord  ?  He  has  a  vast  many  Talents,  —  is  it  an 
easy  thing  for  so  Wise  a  man  to  become  a  Fool 
for  Christ  ?  so  great  a  man  to  become  a  Little 
Child  ?  so  rich  a  man  to  crowd  in  at  the  Strait 
Gate  of  Conversion,  and  make  so  little  noise  ? 
...  If  you  see  good  to  encourage  the  Expedition, 
be  fully  satisfy 'd  the  project  was  formed  in 
Heaven.  Was  the  Lord  first  consulted  in  the 
affair  ?  Did  they  wait  for  his  Counsell  ?  " 

John  Woolman,  the  New  Jersey  Quaker 
(born  in  1720,  died  in  1772),  said,— 

"  There  is  a  principle  which  is  pure,  placed  in 
the  human  mind,  which,  in  different  places  and 
ages  hath  had  different  names;  it  is,  however, 
pure,  and  proceeds  from  God.  It  is  deep  and 
inward,  confined  to  no  forms  of  religion,  nor  ex 
cluded  from  any,  when  the  heart  stands  in  per 
fect  sincerity.  In  whomsoever  this  takes  root 
and  grows,  they  become  brethren.  That  state  in 
which  every  motion  from  the  selfish  spirit  yield- 
eth  to  pure  love,  I  may  acknowlege  with  grati 
tude  to  the  Father  of  Mercies,  is  often  opened 
before  me  as  a  pearl  to  seek  after." 1 

1  The  resemblance  between  some  of  John  Woolman'a 
utterances  and  those  of  Henry  Thoreau  has  been  noticed 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      131 

That  even  the  pious  egotism  and  the 
laughable  vagaries  of  Transcendentalism 
had  their  prototype  in  the  private  medita 
tions  of  the  New  England  Calvinists,  is  well 
known  to  such  as  have  studied  old  diaries 
of  the  Massachusetts  ministers.  Thus,  a 
minister  of  Maiden  (a  successor  of  the  aw 
ful  Michael  Wigglesworth,  whose  alleged 
poem,  "  The  Day  of  Doom,"  as  Cotton 
Mather  thought,  might  perhaps  "  find  our 
children  till  the  Day  itself  arrives  "),  in  his 
diary  for  1735,  thus  enters  his  trying  ex 
periences  with  a  "  one-horse  Shay,"  whose 
short  life  may  claim  comparison  with  that 
of  the  hundred-year  master-piece  of  Dr. 
Holmes's  deacon :  — 

"January  31.  Bought  a  shay  for  £27  10s. 
The  Lord  grant  it  may  be  a  comfort  and  blessing 
to  my  family. 

by  Whittier,  who  says  of  the  New  Jersey  Quaker,  "  From 
his  little  farm  on  the  Kancocas  he  looked  out  with  a 
mingled  feeling  of  wonder  and  sorrow  upon  the  hurry 
and  unrest  of  the  world ;  he  regarded  the  merely  rich  man 
with  unfeigned  pity.  With  nothing  of  his  scorn,  he  had 
all  of  Thoreau's  commiseration  for  people  who  went 
about,  bowed  down  with  the  weight  of  broad  acres  and 
great  houses  on  their  backs."  The  " scorn"  of  Thoreau 
and  the  "  pity/'  of  Woolman,  sprang  from  a  common 
root,  however. 


132  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

"March,  1735.  Had  a  safe  and  comfortable 
journey  to  York. 

"April  24.  Shay  overturned,  with  my  wife 
and  I  in  it,  yet  neither  of  us  much  hurt.  Blessed 
be  our  gracious  Preserver  !  Part  of  the  shay,  as 
it  lay  upon  one  side,  went  over  my  wife,  and  yet 
she  was  scarcely  anything  hurt.  How  wonder 
ful  the  preservation  ! 

"  May  5.  Went  to  the  Beach  with  three  of 
the  children.  The  Beast  being  frighted,  when 
we  were  all  out  of  the  shay,  overturned  and  broke 
it.  I  desire  (I  hope  I  desire  it)  that  the  Lord 
would  teach  me  suitably  to  repent  this  Providence, 
to  make  suitable  r-emarks  on  it,  and  to  be  suita 
bly  affected  with  it.  Have  I  done  well  to  get 
me  a  shay  ?  Have  I  not  been  proud  or  too  fond 
of  this  convenience  ?  Do  I  exercise  the  faith  in 
the  divine  care  and  protection  which  I  ought  to 
do  ?  Should  I  not  be  more  in  my  study,  and  less 
fond  of  diversion  ?  Do  I  not  withhold  more  than 
is  meet  from  pious  and  charitable  uses  ? 

"May  15.  Shay  brought  home ;  mending  cost 
30  shillings.  Favored  in  this  beyond  expecta 
tion. 

"May  16.  My  wife  and  I  rode  to  Rumney 
Marsh.  The  Beast  frighted  several  times." 

At  last  this  divine  comedy  ends  with  the 
pathetic  conclusive  line, — 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.       133 

"June  4.  Disposed  of  my  shay  to  the  Rev. 
Mr.  White." 

I  will  not  pause  to  dwell  on  the  laugh 
able  episodes  and  queer  characteristic  feat 
ures  of  the  Transcendental  Period,  though 
such  it  had  in  abundance.  They  often 
served  to  correct  the  soberer  absurdity  with 
which  our  whole  country  was  slipping  un 
consciously  down  the  easy  incline  of  national 
ruin  and  dishonor,  —  from  which  only  a 
bloody  civil  war  could  at  last  save  us.  Tho- 
reau  saw  this  clearly,  and  his  political  ut 
terances,  paradoxical  as  they  seemed  in  the 
two  decades  from  1840  to  1860,  now  read 
like  the  words  of  a  prophet.  But  there  are 
some  points  in  the  American  Renaissance 
which  may  here  be  touched  on,  so  much 
light  do  they  throw  on  the  times.  It  was 
a  period  of  strange  faiths  and  singular  apoca 
lypses  —  that  of  Charles  Fourier  being  one. 
In  February,  1843,  Mr.  Emerson,  writing 
to  Henry  Thoreau  from  New  York,  where 
he  was  then  lecturing,  said  :  — 

"  Mr.  Brisbane  has  just  given  me  a  faithful 
hour  and  a  half  of  what  he  calls  his  principles, 
and  he  shames  truer  men  by  his  fidelity  and  zeal ; 
and  already  begins  to  hear  the  reverberations  of 


134  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

his  single  voice  from  most  of  the  States  of  the 
Union.  He  thinks  himself  sure  of  W.  H.  Chan- 
ning  here,  as  a  good  Fourierist.  I  laugh  incred 
ulous  whilst  he  recites  (for  it  seems  always  as  if 
he  was  repeating  paragraphs  out  of  his  master's 
book)  descriptions  of  the  self-augmenting  potency 
of  the  solar  system,  which  is  destined  to  contain 
one  hundred  and  thirty-two  bodies,  I  believe,  — 
and  his  urgent  inculcation  of  our  stellar  duties* 
But  it  has  its  kernel  of  sound  truth,  and  its  in 
sanity  is  so  wide  of  the  New  York  insanities  that 
it  is  virtue  and  honor." 

This  was  written  a  few  months  before 
Thoreau  himself  went  to  New  York,  and  it 
was  while  there  that  he  received  from  his 
friends  in  Concord  and  in  Harvard,  the 
wondrous  account  of  Mr.  Alcott's  Paradise 
Regained  at  Fruitlands  ;  where  in  due  time 
Thoreau  made  his  visit  and  inspected  that 
Garden  of  Eden  on  the  Coldspring  Brook. 

If  Mr.  Brisbane  had  his  "  stellar  duties  " 
and  inculcated  them  in  others,  the  Brook 
Farmers  of  1842-43  had  their  planetary  mis 
sion  also ;  namely,  to  cultivate  the  face  of 
the  planet  they  inhabited,  and  to  do  it  with 
their  own  hands,  as  Adam  and  Noah  did. 
Of  the  Brook  Farm  enterprise  much  has 
been  written,  and  much  more  will  be ;  but 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      135 

concerning  the  more  individual  dream  of 
Thoreau's  friends  at  "  Fruitlands,"  less  is 
known ;  and  I  may  quote  a  few  pages  con 
cerning  it  from  Thoreau's  correspondence. 
While  Thoreau  was  at  Staten  Island  in 
1843,  Mr.  Emerson  wrote  to  him  often,  giv 
ing  the  news  of  Concord  as  a  Transcend 
ental  capital.  In  May  of  that  year  we 
have  this  intelligence :  — 

"  Ellery  Charming  is  well  settled  in  his  house, 
and  works  very  steadily  thus  far,  and  our  inter 
course  is  very  agreeable  to  me.  Young  Ball  (B. 
W.)  has  been  to  see  me,  and  is  a  prodigious 
reader  and  a  youth  of  great  promise,  —  born,  too, 
in  the  good  town.  Mr.  Hawthorne  is  well,  and 
Mr.  Alcott  and  Mr.  Lane  are  revolving  a  pur 
chase  in  Harvard  of  ninety  acres." 

This  was  "  Fruitlands,"  described  in  the 
"  Dial "  for  1843,  and  which  Charles  Lane 
himself  describes  in  a  letter  soon  to  be  cited. 
In  June,  1843,  Mr.  Emerson  again  sends 
tidings  from  Concord,  where  the  Fitchburg 
railroad  was  then  building  :  — 

"  The  town  is  full  of  Irish,  and  the  woods  of 
engineers,  with  theodolite  and  red  flag,  singing 
out  their  feet  and  inches  to  each  other  from  sta 
tion  to  station.  Near  Mr.  Alcott's  (the  Hosmer 


136  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

cottage)  the  road  is  already  begun.  From  Mr. 
A.  and  Mr.  Lane  at  Harvard  we  have  yet  heard 
nothing.  They  went  away  in  good  spirits,  hav 
ing  sent  4  Wood  Abram  '  and  Lamed,  and  Will 
iam  Lane  before  them  with  horse  and  plow,  a 
few  days  in  advance,  to  begin  the  spring  work. 
Mr.  Lane  paid  me  a  long  visit,  in  which  he  was 
more  than  I  had  ever  known  him  gentle  and 
open ;  and  it  was  impossible  not  to  sympathize 
with  and  honor  projects  that  so  often  seem  with 
out  feet  or  hands.  They  have  near  a  hundred 
acres  of  land  which  they  do  not  want,  and  no 
house,  which  they  want  first  of  all.  But  they 
account  this  an  advantage,  as  it  gives  them  the 
occasion  they  so  much  desire,  —  of  building  after 
their  own  idea.  In  the  event  of  their  attracting 
to  their  company  a  carpenter  or  two,  which  is  not 
impossible,  it  would  be  a  great  pleasure  to  see 
their  building,  —  which  could  hardly  fail  to  be 
new  and  beautiful.  They  have  fifteen  acres  of 
woodland,  with  good  timber." 

Then,  passing  in  a  moment  from  "  Fruit- 
lands"  to  Concord  woods,  Thoreau's  friend 
writes :  — 

"  Ellery  Channing  is  excellent  company,  and 
we  walk  in  all  directions.  He  remembers  you 
with  great  faith  and  hope,  thinks  you  ought  not 
to  see  Concord  again  these  ten  years ;  that  you 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      137 

ought  to  grind  up  fifty  Concords  in  your  mill ; 
and  much  other  opinion  and  counsel  he  holds  in 
store  on  this  topic.  Hawthorne  walked  with  me 
yesterday  afternoon,  and  not  until  after  our  re 
turn  did  I  read  his  *  Celestial  Railroad/  which  has 
a  serene  strength  we  cannot  afford  not  to  praise, 
in  this  low  life.  I  have  letters  from  Miss  Fuller 
at  Niagara.  She  found  it  sadly  cold  and  rainy  at 
the  Falls." 

Not  so  with  Mr.  Alcott  and  Mr.  Lane  in 
the  first  flush  of  their  hopes  at  Fruitlands. 
On  the  9th  of  June,  —  the  date  of  the  let 
ter  just  quoted  being  June  7,  —  Mr.  Lane 
writes  to  Thoreau  :  — 

"  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  The  receipt  of  two  accept 
able  numbers  of  the  '  Pathfinder '  reminds  me 
that  I  am  not  altogether  forgotten  by  one  who,  if 
not  in  the  busy  world,  is  at  least  much  nearer  to 
it  externally  than  I  am.  Busy  indeed  we  all 
are,  since  our  removal  here  ;  but  so  recluse  is  our 
position,  that  with  the  world  at  large  we  have 
scarcely  any  connection.  You  may  possibly  have 
heard  that,  after  all  our  efforts  during  the  spring 
had  failed  to  place  us  in  connection  with  the 
earth,  and  Mr.  Alcott's  journey  to  Oriskany  and 
Vermont  had  turned  out  a  blank,  —  one  after 
noon  in  the  latter  part  of  May,  Providence  sent 
to  us  the  legal  owner  of  a  slice  of  the  planet  ir 


138  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

this  township  (Harvard),  with  whom  we  have 
been  enabled  to  conclude  for  the  concession  of 
his  rights.  It  is  very  remotely  placed,  nearly  three 
miles  beyond  the  village,  without  a  road,  sur 
rounded  by  a  beautiful  green  landscape  of  fields 
and  woods,  with  the  distance  filled  up  by  some 
of  the  loftiest  mountains  in  the  State.  The  views 
are,  indeed,  most  poetic  and  inspiring.  You  have 
no  doubt  seen  the  neighborhood  ;  but  from  these 
very  fields,  where  you  may  at  once  be  at  home  and 
out,  there  is  enough  to  love  and  revel  in  for  sym 
pathetic  souls  like  yours.  On  the  estate  are 
about  fourteen  acres  of  wood,  part  of  it  extremely 
pleasant  as  a  retreat,  a  very  sylvan  realization, 
which  only  wants  a  Thoreau's  mind  to  elevate  it 
to  classic  beauty. 

"  I  have  some  imagination  that  you  are  not  so 
happy  and  so  well  housed  in  your  present  posi 
tion  as  you  would  be  here  amongst  us  ;  although 
at  present  there  is  much  hard  manual  labor,  — 
so  much  that,  as  you  perceive,  my  usual  hand 
writing  is  very  greatly  suspended.  We  have 
only  two  associates  in  addition  to  our  own  fami 
lies  ;  our  house  accommodations  are  poor  and 
scanty  ;  but  the  greatest  want  is  of  good  female 
aid.  Far  too  much  labor  devolves  on  Mrs.  Al- 
cott.  If  you  should  light  on  any  such  assistance, 
it  would  be  charitable  to  give  it  a  direction  this 
way.  We  may,  perhaps,  be  rather  particulai 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      139 

about  the  quality  ;  but  the  conditions  will  pretty 
well  determine  the  acceptability  of  the  parties 
without  a  direct  adjudication  on  our  part.  For 
though  to  me  our  mode  of  life  is  luxurious  in  the 
highest  degree,  yet  generally  it  seems  to  be 
thought  that  the  setting  aside  of  all  impure  diet, 
dirty  habits,  idle  thoughts,  and  selfish  feelings, 
is  a  course  of  self-denial,  scarcely  to  be  encoun 
tered  or  even  thought  of  in  such  an  alluring 
world  as  this  in  which  we  dwell. 

"Besides  the  busy  occupations  of  each  suc 
ceeding  day,  we  form,  in  this  ample  theatre  of 
hope,  many  forthcoming  scenes.  The  nearer  little 
copse  is  designed  as  the  site  of  the  cottages. 
Fountains  can  be  made  to  descend  from  their  gran 
ite  sources  on  the  hill-slope  to  every  apartment  if 
required.  Gardens  are  to  displace  the  warm  graz 
ing  glades  on  the  south,  and  numerous  human 
beings,  instead  of  cattle,  shall  here  enjoy  exist 
ence.  The  farther  wood  offers  to  the  naturalist 
and  the  poet  an  exhaustless  haunt ;  and  a  short 
cleaning  of  the  brook  would  connect  our  boat 
with  the  Nashua.  Such  are  the  designs  which 
Mr.  Alcott  and  I  have  just  sketched,  as,  resting 
from  planting,  we  walked  round  this  reserve. 

"  In  your  intercourse  with  the  dwellers  in  the 
great  city,  have  you  alighted  on  Mr.  Edward  Pal 
mer,  who  studies  with  Dr.  Beach,  the  Herbalist  ? 
He  will,  I  think,  from  his  previous  nature-love, 


140  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

and  his  affirmations  to  Mr.  Alcott,  be  animated 
on  learning  of  this  actual  wooing  and  winning  of 
Nature's  regards.  We  should  be  most  happy  to 
see  him  with  us.  Having  become  so  far  actual, 
from  the  real,  we  might  fairly  enter  into  the 
typical,  if  he  could  help  us  in  any  way  to  types 
of  the  true  metal.  We  have  not  passed  away 
from  home,  to  see  or  hear  of  the  world's  doings, 
but  the  report  has  reached  us  of  Mr.  W.  H. 
Channing's  fellowship  with  the  Phalansterians, 
and  of  his  eloquent  speeches  in  their  behalf. 
Their  progress  will  be  much  aided  by  his  acces 
sion.  To  both  these  worthy  men  be  pleased  to 
suggest  our  humanest  sentiments.  While  they 
stand  amongst  men,  it  is  well  to  find  them  acting 
out  the  truest  possible  at  the  moment. 

"  Just  before  we  heard  of  this  place,  Mr.  Al 
cott  had  projected  a  settlement  at  the  Cliffs  on 
the  Concord  River,  cutting  down  wood  and  build 
ing  a  cottage  ;  but  so  many  more  facilities  were 
presented  here  that  we  quitted  the  old  classic 
town  for  one  which  is  to  be  not  less  renowned. 
As  far  as  I  could  judge,  our  absence  promised 
little  pleasure  to  our  old  Concord  friends  ;  but  at 
signs  of  progress  I  presume  they  rejoiced  with, 
dear  friend,  Yours  faithfully, 

"  CHARLES  LANE." 

Another  Palmer  than  the  Edward  here 
mentioned  became  an  inmate  of  "Fruit- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      141 

lands,"  and,  in  course  of  time  its  owner; 
the  abandoned  paradise,  which  was  held  by 
Mr.  Lane  and  Mr.  Alcott  for  less  than  a 
year,  is  now  the  property  of  his  son.  Mr. 
Lane,  after  a  time,  returned  to  England  and 
died  there ;  Mr.  Alcott  to  Concord,  where, 
in  1845,  he  aided  Thoreau  in  building  his 
hut  by  Walden.  Mr.  Channing  (the  nephew 
and  biographer  of  Dr.  Channing)  contin 
ued  his  connection  with  the  "  Phalansteri- 
ans  "  in  New  Jersey  until  1849  or  later,  for 
in  that  year  Fredrika  Bremer  found  him 
dwelling  and  preaching  among  them,  at  the 
"North  American  Phalanstery,"  to  which 
he  had  been  invited  from  his  Unitarian  par 
ish  in  Cincinnati,  about  the  time  that  Brook 
Farm  was  made  a  community,  and  before 
Mr.  Alcott's  dream  had  taken  earthly  shape 
at  "  Fruitlands."  The  account  given  by 
Miss  Bremer  of  the  terms  upon  which  Mr. 
Channing  was  thus  invited  to  New  Jersey, 
show  what  was  the  spirit  of  Transcenden 
talism  then,  on  its  social  side.  They  said  to 
him, — 

"  Come  to  us,  —  be  our  friend  and  spiritual 
shepherd,  but  in  perfect  freedom.  Follow  your 
own  inspiration,  —  preach,  talk  to  us,  how  and 


142  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

when  it  appears  best  to  you.  We  undertake  to 
provide  for  your  pecuniary  wants ;  live  free  from 
anxiety,  how,  and  where  you  will ;  but  teach  us 
how  we  should  live  and  work ;  our  homes  and 
our  hearts  are  open  to  you." 

It  was  upon  such  terms  as  this,  honorable 
alike  to  those  who  gave  and  those  who  re 
ceived,  that  much  of  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  work  of  the  Transcendental  revival 
was  done.  There  was  another  and  an  un 
social  side  to  the  movement  also,  which  Mr. 
Emerson  early  described  in  these  words, 
that  apply  to  Thoreau  and  to  Alcott  at  one 
period :  — 

"  It  is  a  sign  of  our  times,  conspicuous  to  the 
coarsest  observer,  that  many  intelligent  and  relig 
ious  persons  withdraw  themselves  from  the  com 
mon  labors  and  competitions  of  the  market  and 
the  caucus,  and  betake  themselves  to  a  solitary 
and  critical  way  of  living,  from  which  no  solid 
fruit  has  yet  appeared  to  justify  their  separation. 
They  hold  themselves  aloof;  they  feel  the  dis 
proportion  between  themselves  and  the  work 
offered  them,  and  they  prefer  to  ramble  in  the 
country  and  perish  of  ennui,  to  the  degradation 
of  such  charities  and  such  ambitions  as  the  city 
can  propose  to  them.  They  are  striking  work 
and  crying  out  for  somewhat  worthy  to  do. 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.  '    143 

They  are  lonely ;  the  spirit  of  their  writing  and 
conversation  is  lonely ;  they  repel  influences ; 
they  shun  general  society ;  they  incline  to  shut 
themselves  in  their  chamber  in  the  house ;  to  live 
in  the  country  rather  than  in  the  town ;  and  to 
find  their  tasks  and  amusements  in  solitude.  They 
are  not  good  citizens,  not  good  members  of  so 
ciety  ;  unwillingly  they  bear  their  part  of  the 
public  and  private  burdens ;  they  do  not  willingly 
share  in  the  public  charities,  in  the  public  re 
ligious  rites,  in  the  enterprise  of  education,  of 
missions,  foreign  or  domestic,  in  the  abolition  of 
the  slave  trade,  or  in  the  temperance  society. 
They  do  not  even  like  to  vote.  The  philanthro 
pists  inquire  whether  Transcendentalism  does  not 
mean  sloth ;  they  had  as  lief  hear  that  their 
friend  is  dead,  as  that  he  is  a  Transcendentalist ; 
for  then  is  he  paralyzed,  and  can  do  nothing  for 
humanity." 

It  was  this  phase  of  Transcendentalism 
that  gave  most  anxiety  to  Thoreau's  good 
old  pastor,  Dr.  Ripley,  who  early  foresaw 
what  immediate  fruit  might  be  expected 
from  this  fair  tree  of  mysticism,  —  this 
"  burning  bush  "  which  had  started  up,  all 
at  once,  in  the  very  garden  of  his  parson 
age.  I  know  few  epistles  more  pathetic  in 
their  humility  and  concern  for  the  future, 


144  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

than  one  which  Dr.  Ripley  addressed  to  Dr. 
Cbanning  in  February,  1839,  after  hearing 
and  meditating  on  the  utterances  of  Alcott, 
Emerson,  Thoreau,  George  Ripley,  and  the 
other  u  apostles  of  the  newness,"  who  dis 
turbed  with  their  oracles  the  quiet  air  of 
his  parish.  He  wrote  :  — 

"  Denied,  as  I  am,  the  privilege  of  going  from 
home,  of  visiting  and  conversing  with  enlightened 
friends,  and  of  reading  even ;  broken  down  with 
the  infirmities  of  age,  and  subject  to  fits  that  de 
prive  me  of  reason  and  the  use  of  my  limbs,  I 
feel  it  a  duty  to  be  patient  and  submissive  to  the 
will  of  God,  who  is  too  wise  to  err,  and  too  good 
to  injure.  Some  reason  is  left,  —  my  mental 
powers,  though  weak,  are  yet  awake,  and  I  long 
to  be  doing  something  for  good.  The  contrast 
between  paper  and  ink  is  so  strong,  that  I  can 
write  better  than  do  anything  else.  In  this  way 
I  take  the  liberty  to  express  to  you  a  few 
thoughts,  which  you  will  receive  as  well-meant 
and  sincere.  .  .  . 

"  We  may  certainly  assume  that  whatever  is 
unreasonable,  self-contradictory,  and  destitute  of 
common  sense,  is  erroneous.  Should  we  not  be 
Jikely  to  find  the  truth,  in  all  moral  subjects, 
were  we  to  make  more  use  of  plain  reason  and 
common  sense  ?  I  know  that  our  modern  spec- 


THE   TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.      145 

ulators,  Transcendentalists,  or,  as  they  prefer  to 
be  called,  Realists,  presume  to  follow  Reason  in 
her  purest  dictates,  her  sublime  and  unfrequented 
regions.  They  presume,  by  her  power,  not  only 
to  discover  what  is  truth,  but  to  judge  of  revealed 
truth.  But  is  not  their  whole  process  marred  by 
leaving  out  common  sense,  by  which  mankind  are 
generally  governed  ?  That  superiority  which 
places  a  man  above  the  power  of  doing  good  to 
his  fellow-men  seems  to  me  not  very  desirable. 
I  honor  most  the  man  who  transcends  others  in 
capacity  and  disposition  to  do  good,  and  whose 
daily  practice  corresponds  with  his  profession. 
Here  I  speak  of  professed  Christians.  I  would 
not  treat  with  disrespect  and  severe  censure  men 
who  advance  sentiments  which  I  may  neither  ap 
prove  nor  understand,  provided  their  authors  be 
men  of  learning,  piety,  and  holy  lives.  The  spec 
ulations  and  novel  opinions  of  such  men  rarely 
prove  injurious.  Nevertheless,  I  would  that 
their  mental  endowments  might  find  a  better 
method  of  doing  good,  —  a  more  simple  and  in 
telligible  manner  of  informing  and  reforming 
their  fellow-men.  .  .  . 

"  The  hope  of  the  gospel  is  my  hope,  my  con 
solation,  support  and  rejoicing.  Such  is  my  state 
of  health  that  death  is  constantly  before  me ;  no 
minute  would  it  be  unexpected.  I  am  waiting 
in  faith  and  hope,  but  humble  and  penitent  for 
10 


146  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

my  imperfections  and  faults.  The  prayer  of  the 
publican,  '  God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner ! '  is 
never  forgotten.  I  have  hoped  to  see  and  con 
verse  with  you,  but  now  despair.  If  you  shall 
think  I  use  too  much  freedom  with  you,  charge 
it  to  the  respect  and  esteem  which  are  cherished 
for  your  character  by  your  affectionate  friend 
and  brother,  E.  KIPLEY. 

"  CONCORD,  February  26,  1839." 

At  this  time  Dr.  Ripley  was  almost 
eighty-eight,  and  he  lived  two  years  longer, 
to  mourn  yet  more  pathetically  over  the 
change  of  times  and  manners.  "It  was 
fit,"  said  Emerson,  "  that  in  the  fall  of 
laws,  this  loyal  man  should  die."  But  the 
young  men  who  succeeded  him  were  no 
less  loyal  to  the  unwritten  laws,  and  from 
their  philosophy,  which  to  the  old  theolo 
gian  seemed  so  misty  and  unreal,  there  flow 
ered  forth,  in  due  season,  the  most  active 
and  world- wide  philanthropies.  Twenty 
years  after  this  pastoral  epistle,  there  came 
to  Concord  another  Christian  of  the  antique 
type,  more  Puritan  and  Hebraic  than  Dr. 
Ripley  himself,  yet  a  Transcendentalist, 
too,  —  and  JOHN  BKOWN  found  no  lack 
of  practical  good-will  in  Thoreau,  Alcott, 


THE   TRANSCENDENTAL  PERIOD.     147 

Emerson,  and  the  other  Transcendentalists. 
The  years  had  "  come  full  circle,"  the  Sibyl 
had  burnt  her  last  prophetic  book,  and  the 
new  aeon  was  about  to  open  with  the  down 
fall  of  slaver j. 


CHAPTER    VI 

EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHOESHIP. 

IT  has  been  a  common  delusion,  not  yet 
quite  faded  away,  that  the  chief  Transcend- 
entalists  were  but  echoes  of  each  other,  — 
that  Emerson  imitated  Carlyle,  Thoreau 
and  Alcott  imitated  Emerson,  and  so  on  to 
the  end  of  the  chapter.  No  doubt  that  the 
atmosphere  of  each  of  these  men  affected 
the  others,  nor  that  they  shared  a  common 
impulse  communicated  by  what  Matthew 
Arnold  likes  to  call  the  Zeitgeist,—  the 
ever-felt  spirit  of  the  time.  In  the  most 
admirable  of  the  group,  who  is  called  by 
preeminence  "the  Sage  of  Concord,"  —  the 
poet  Emerson,  —  there  has  been  an  out- 
breathing  inspiration  as  profound  as  that  of 
the  Zeitgeist  himself;  so  that  even  Haw 
thorne,  the  least  susceptible  of  men,  found 
himself  affected  as  he  says,  "  after  living 
for  three  years  within  the  subtle  influence 
of  an  intellect  like  Emerson's."  But,  in 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      149 

fact,  Thoreau  brought  to  his  intellectual 
tasks  an  originality  as  marked  as  Emer 
son's,  if  not  so  brilliant  and  star-like  —  a 
patience  far  greater  than  his,  and  a  proud 
independence  that  makes  him  the  most  sol 
itary  of  modern  thinkers.  I  have  been 
struck  by  these  qualities  in  reading  his  yet 
unknown  first  essays  in  authorship,  the 
juvenile  papers  he  wrote  while  in  college, 
from  the  age  of  seventeen  to  that  of  twenty, 
before  Emerson  had  published  anything  ex 
cept  his  first  little  volume,  u  Nature,"  and 
while  Thoreau,  like  other  young  men,  was 
reading  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  Addison 
and  the  earlier  English  classics,  from  Mil 
ton  backward  to  Chaucer.  Let  me  there 
fore  quote  from  these  papers,  carefully 
preserved  by  him,  with  their  dates,  and 
sometimes  with  the  marks  of  the  rhetorical 
professor  on  their  margins.  Along  with 
these  may  be  cited  some  of  his  earlier  verses, 
in  which  a  sentiment  more  purely  human 
and  almost  amatory  appears,  than  in  the 
later  and  colder,  if  higher  flights  of  his 
song. 

The  earliest  writings  of  Thoreau,  placed 
in  my  hands  by  his  literary  executor,  Mr. 


150  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

Harrison  Blake  of  Worcester,  are  the  first 
of  his  Cambridge  essays,  technically  called 
"  themes  "  and  "  forensics."  These  began 
several  years  before  his  daily  journals  were 
kept,  namely,  in  1834;  and  it  is  curious 
that  one  of  them,  dated  January  17,  1835, 
but  written  in  1834,  recommends  "  keeping 
a  private  journal  or  record  of  our  thoughts, 
feelings,  studies,  and  daily  experience." 
This  is  precisely  what  Thoreau  did  from 
1837  till  his  death  ;  and  it  may  be  interest 
ing  to  see  what  reasons  the  boy  of  seventeen 
advanced  for  the  practice.  He  says :  — 

"As  those  pieces  which  the  painter  sketches 
for  his  own  amusement,  in  his  leisure  hours,  are 
often  superior  to  his  most  elaborate  productions, 
so  it  is  that  ideas  often  suggest  themselves  to  us 
spontaneously,  as  it  were,  far  surpassing  in  beauty 
those  which  arise  in  the  mind  upon  applying  our 
selves  to  any  particular  subject.  Hence,  could  a 
machine  be  invented  which  would  instantaneously 
arrange  upon  paper  each  idea  as  it  occurs  to  us, 
without  any  exertion  on  our  part,  how  extremely 
useful  would  it  be  considered !  The  relation  be 
tween  this  and  the  practice  of  keeping  a  journal 
is  obvious.  ...  If  each  one  would  employ  a 
certain  portion  of  each  day  in  looking  back  upon 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      151 

the  time  which  has  passed,  and  in  writing  down 
his  thoughts  and  feelings,  in  reckoning  up  his 
daily  gains,  that  he  may  be  able  to  detect  what 
ever  false  coins  may  have  crept  into  his  coffers, 
and,  as  it  were,  in  settling  accounts  with  his 
mind,  —  not  only  would  his  daily  experience  be 
greatly  increased,  since  his  feelings  and  ideas 
would  thus  be  more  clearly  defined,  —  but  he 
would  be  ready  to  turn  over  a  new  leaf  (having 
carefully  perused  the  preceding  one)  and  would 
not  continue  to  glance  carelessly  over  the  same 
page,  without  being  able  to  distinguish  it  from  a 
new  one." 

This  is  ingenious,  quaint,  and  mercantile, 
bespeaking  the  hereditary  bent  of  his  fam 
ily  to  trade  and  orderly  accounts  ;  but  what 
follows  in  the  same  essay  is  more  to  the 
purpose,  as  striking  the  key-note  of  Tho- 
reau's  whole  after-life.  He  adds  :  — 

"  Most  of  us  are  apt  to  neglect  the  study  of 
our  own  characters,  thoughts,  and  feelings,  and, 
for  the  purpose  of  forming  our  own  minds,  look 
to  others,  who  should  merely  be  considered  as  dif 
ferent  editions  of  the  same  great  work.  To  be 
sure,  it  would  be  well  for  us  to  examine  the  va 
rious  copies,  that  we  might  detect  any  errors ; 
yet  it  would  be  foolish  for  one  to  borrow  a  work 
which  he  possessed  himself,  but  had  not  perused." 


152  HENRY  D.  THOREA&. 

The  earliest  record  of  the  day's  observa 
tions  which  I  find  is  dated  a  few  months 
later  than  this  (April  20,  1835),  when 
Henry  Thoreau  was  not  quite  eighteen,  and 
relates  to  the  beauties  of  nature.  The  first 
passage  describes  a  Sunday  prospect  from 
the  garret  window  of  his  father's  house, 
(afterwards  the  residence  of  Mr.  William 
Munroe,  the  benefactor  of  the  Concord  Li 
brary),  on  the  main  street  of  the  village. 
He  writes :  — 

"  'T  was  always  my  delight  to  monopolize  the 
little  Gothic  window  which  overlooked  the  kitch 
en-garden,  particularly  of  a  Sabbath  afternoon ; 
when  all  around  was  quiet,  and  Nature  herself 
was  taking  her  afternoon  nap,  —  when  the  last 
peal  of  the  bell  in  the  neighboring  steeple, 
'  Swinging  slow  with  sullen  roar/ 

had  '  left  the  vale  to  solitude  and  me'  and  the 
very  air  scarcely  dared  breathe,  lest  it  should  dis 
turb  the  universal  calm.  Then  did  I  use,  with 
eyes  upturned,  to  gaze  upon  the  clouds,  and,  al 
lowing  my  imagination  to  wander,  search  for  flaws 
in  their  rich  drapery,  that  I  might  get  a  peep 
at  that  world  beyond,  which  they  seem  intended 
to  veil  from  our  view.  Now  is  my  attention  en 
gaged  by  a  truant  hawk,  as,  like  a  messenger 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      153 

from  those  ethereal  regions,  he  issues  from  the 
bosom  of  a  cloud,  and,  at  first  a  mere  speck  in 
the  distance,  comes  circling  onward,  exploring 
every  seeming  creek,  and  rounding  every  jutting 
precipice.  And  now,  his  mission  ended,  what 
can  be  more  majestic  than  his  stately  flight,  as 
he  wheels  around  some  towering  pine,  enveloped 
in  a  cloud  of  smaller  birds  that  have  united  to 
expel  him  from  their  premises." 

The  second  passage,  under  the  same  date, 
seems  to  describe  earlier  and  repeated  visits, 
made  by  his  elder  brother  John  and  him 
self,  to  a  hill  which  was  always  a  favorite 
resort  of  Thoreau's,  Fairhaven  Cliffs,  over 
looking  the  river-bay,  known  as  "  Fairha 
ven,"  a  mile  or  two  up  the  river  from  Con 
cord  village  toward  Sudbury  :  — 

"  In  the  freshness  of  the  dawn  my  brother  and 
I  were  ever  ready  to  enjoy  a  stroll  to  a  certain 
cliff,  distant  a  mile  or  more,  where  we  were  wont 
to  climb  to  the  highest  peak,  and  seating  our 
selves  on  some  rocky  platform,  catch  the  first  ray 
of  the  morning  sun,  as  it  gleamed  upon  the 
smooth,  still  river,  wandering  in  sullen  silence 
far  below.  The  approach  to  the  precipice  is  by 
no  means  calculated  to  prepare  one  for  the  glo 
rious  denouement  at  hand.  After  following  for 
some  time  a  delightful  path  that  winds  through 


154  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

the  woods,  occasionally  crossing  a  rippling  brook, 
and  not  forgetting  to  visit  a  sylvan  dell,  whose 
solitude  is  made  audible  by  the  unwearied  tink 
ling  of  a  crystal  %pring, — you  suddenly  emerge 
from  the  trees  upon  a  flat  and  mossy  rock,  which 
forms  the  summit  of  a  beetling  crag.  The  feel 
ings  which  come  over  one  on  first  beholding  this 
freak  of  nature  are  indescribable.  The  giddy 
height,  the  iron-bound  rock,  the  boundless  horizon 
open  around,  and  the  beautiful  river  at  your  feet, 
with  its  green  and  sloping  banks,  fringed  with 
trees  and  shrubs  of  every  description,  are  calcu 
lated  to  excite  in  the  beholder  emotions  of  no 
common  occurrence,  —  to  inspire  him  with  noble 
and  sublime  emotions.  The  eye  wanders  over 
the  broad  and  seemingly  compact  surface'  of  the 
slumbering  forest  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
stream,  and  catches  an  occasional  glimpse  of  a 
little  farm-house,  *  resting  in  a  green  hollow,  and 
lapped  in  the  bosom  of  plenty  ; '  while  a  gentle 
swell  of  the  river,  a  rustic,  and  fortunately  rather 
old-looking  bridge  on  the  right,  with  the  cloud- 
like  Wachusett  in  the  distance,  give  a  finish  and 
beauty  to  the  landscape,  that  is  rarely  to  be  met 
with  even  in  our  own  fair  land.  This  interest 
ing  spot,  if  we  may  believe  tradition,  was  the  fa 
vorite  haunt  of  the  red  man,  before  the  axe  of 
his  pale-faced  visitor  had  laid  low  its  loftier  hon 
ors,  or  his  <  strong  water '  had  wasted  the  energies 
of  the  race." 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      155 

Here  we  have  a  touch  of  fine  writing, 
natural  in  a  boy  who  had  read  Irving  and 
Goldsmith,  and  exaggerating  a  little  the 
dimensions  of  the  rocks  and  rills  of  which 
he  wrote.  But  how  smooth  the  flow  of  de 
scription,  how  well-placed  the  words,  how 
sure  and  keen  the  eye  of  the  young  observ 
er  !  To  this  mount  of  vision  did  Thoreau 
and  his  friends  constantly  resort  in  after 
years,  and  it  was  on  the  plateau  beneath 
that  Mr.  Alcott,  in  1843,  was  about  to  cut 
down  the  woods  and  build  his  Paradise, 
when  a  less  inviting  fate,  as  he  thought, 
beckoned  his  English  friend  Lane  and  him 
self  to  "  Fruitlands,"  in  the  distant  town 
of  Harvard.  At  some  time  after  this,  per 
haps  while  Thoreau  was  encamped  at  Wai- 
den  with  his  books  and  his  flute,  Mr.  Emer 
son  sent  him  the  following  note,  which 
gives  us  now  a  glimpse  into  that  Arca 
dia  :  — 

"  Will  you  not  come  up  to  the  Cliff  this  P.  M., 
at  any  hour  convenient  to  you,  where  our  ladies 
will  be  greatly  gratified  to  see  you?  and  the 
more,  they  say,  if  you  will  bring  your  flute  for 
the  echo's  sake,  though  now  the  wind  blows. 

«  R.  W.  E. 

"  Monday,  1  o'clock  P.  M." 


156  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

It  does  not  appear  that  Thoreau  wrote 
verses  at  this  time,  though  he  was  a  great 
reader  of  the  best  poetry,  —  of  Milton  very 
early,  and  with  constant  admiration  and 
quotation.  Thus,  in  a  college  essay  of  1835, 
on  "  Simplicity  of  Style,"  he  has  this  pas 
sage  concerning  the  Bible  and  Milton :  — 

"  The  most  sublime  and  noblest  precepts  may 
be  conveyed  in  a  plain  and  simple  strain.  The 
Scriptures  afford  abundant  proof  of  this.  What 
images  can  be  more  natural,  what  sentiments  of 
greater  weight  and  at  the  same  time  more  noble 
and  exalted  than  those  with  which  they  abound  ? 
They  possess  no  local  or  relative  ornament  which 
may  be  lost  in  a  translation  ;  clothed  in  what 
ever  dress,  they  still  retain  their  peculiar  beau 
ties.  Here  is  simplicity  itself.  Every  one  allows 
this,  every  one  admires  it,  yet  how  few  attain 
to  it !  The  union  of  wisdom  and  simplicity  is 
plainly  hinted  at  in  the  following  lines  of  Mil 
ton  :— 

"  Suspicion  sleeps 

At  Wisdom's  gate,  and  to  Simplicity 

Resigns  her  charge/  " 

Early  in  1837  Thoreau  wrote  an  elabo 
rate  paper,  though  of  no  great  length,  on 
Milton's  "  L' Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso," 
with  many  quotations,  in  course  of  which 
he  said :  — 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      157 

"  These  poems  place  Milton  in  an  entirely  new 
and  extremely  pleasing  light  to  the  reader,  who 
was  previously  familiar  with  him  as  the  author 
of  *  Paradise  Lost'  alone.  If  before  he  ven 
erated,  he  may  now  admire  and  love  him.  The 
immortal  Milton  seems  for  a  space  to  have  put 
on  mortality,  —  to  have  snatched  a  moment 
from  the  weightier  cares  of  Heaven  and  Hell,  to 
wander  for  a  while  among  the  sons  of  men.  .  .  . 
I  have  dwelt  upon  the  poet's  beauties  and  not  so 
much  as  glanced  at  his  blemishes.  A  pleasing 
image,  or  a  fine  sentiment  loses  none  of  its 
charms,  though  Burton,  or  Beaumont  and  Fletch 
er,  or  Marlowe,  or  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  may  have 
written  something  very  similar,  —  or  even  in  an 
other  connection,  may  have  used  the  identical 
word,  whose  aptness  we  so  much  admire.  That 
always  appeared  to  me  a  contemptible  kind  of 
criticism  which,  deliberately  and  in  cold  blood, 
can  dissect  the  sublimest  passage,  and  take  pleas 
ure  in  the  detection  of  slight  verbal  incongrui 
ties  ;  when  applied  to  Milton,  it  is  little  better 
than  sacrilege." 

The  moral  view  taken  by  the  young  col 
legian  in  these  essays  is  quite  as  interesting 
as  the  literary  opinions,  or  the  ease  of  his 
style.  In  September,  1835,  discussing  pun 
ishments,  he  says :  — 


158  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

"  Certainty  is  more  effectual  than  severity  of 
punishment.  No  man  will  deliberately  cut  his 
own  fingers.  Some  have  asked,  *  Cannot  reward 
be  substituted  for  punishment?  Is  hope  a  less 
powerful  incentive  to  action  than  fear  ?  When 
a  political  pharmacopoeia  has  the  command  of 
both  ingredients,  wherefore  employ  the  bitter  in 
stead  of  the  sweet  ?  '  This  reasoning  is  absurd. 
Does  a  man  deserve  to  be  rewarded  for  refraining 
from  murder  ?  Is  the  greatest  virtue  merely 
negative  ?  or  does  it  rather  consist  in  the  per 
formance  of  a  thousand  e very-day  duties,  hidden 
from  the  eye  of  the  world  ?  " 

In  an  essay  on  the  effect  of  story-telling, 
written  in  1836,  he  says :  — 

"  The  story  of  the  world  never  ceases  to  inter 
est.  The  child  enchanted  by  the  melodies  of 
Mother  Goose,  the  scholar  pondering  'the  tale 
of  Troy  divine,'  and  the  historian  breathing  the 
atmosphere  of  past  ages,  —  all  manifest  the  same 
passion,  are  alike  the  creatures  of  curiosity.  The 
same  passion  for  the  novel  (somewhat  modified, 
to  be  sure),  that  is  manifested  in  our  early  days, 
leads  us,  in  after-life,  when  the  sprightliness  andl 
credulity  of  youth  have  given  way  to  the  reserve 
and  skepticism  of  manhood,  to  the  more  serious, 
though  scarcely  less  wonderful  annals  of  the 
world.  The  love  of  stories  and  of  story-telling 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      159 

cherishes  a  purity  of  heart,  a  frankness  and  can 
dor  of  disposition,  a  respect  for  what  is  generous 
and  elevated,  a  contempt  for  what  is  mean  and 
dishonorable,  and  tends  to  multiply  merry  com 
panions  and  never-failing  friends." 

In  March,  1837,  in  an  essay  on  the  source 
of  our  feeling  of  the  sublime,  Thoreau 
says :  — 

"  The  emotion  excited  by  the  sublime  is  the 
most  unearthly  and  god-like  we  mortals  experi 
ence.  It  depends  for  the  peculiar  strength  with 
which  it  takes  hold  on  and  occupies  the  mind, 
npon  a  principle  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of 
that  worship  which  we  pay  to  the  Creator  him 
self.  And  is  fear  the  foundation  of  that  wor 
ship  ?  Is  fear  the  ruling  principle  of  our  relig 
ion  ?  Is  it  not  rather  the  mother  of  superstition  ? 
Yes,  that  principle  which  prompts  us  to  pay  an 
involuntary  homage  to  the  infinite,  the  incompre 
hensible,  the  sublime,  forms  the  very  basis  of  our 
religion.  It  is  a  principle  implanted  in  us  by 
our  Maker,  a  part  of  our  very  selves  ;  we  can 
not  eradicate  it,  we  cannot  resist  it ;  fear  may  be 
overcome,  death  may  be  despised ;  but  the  infinite^ 
the  sublime  seize  upon  the  soul  and  disarm  it. 
We  may  overlook  them,  or  rather  fall  short  of 
them  ;  we  may  pass  them  by,  but,  so  sure  as  we 
meet  them  face  to  face,  we  yield." 


160  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

Speaking  of  national  characteristics,  he 
says : — 

"  It  is  not  a  little  curious  to  observe  how  man, 
the  boasted  lord  of  creation,  is  the  slave  of  a 
name,  a  mere  sound.  How  much  mischief  have 
those  magical  words,  North,  South,  East,  and 
West  caused  !  Could  we  rest  satisfied  with  one 
mighty,  all-embracing  West,  leaving  the  other 
three  cardinal  points  to  the  Old  World,  methinks 
we  should  not  have  cause  for  so  much  apprehen 
sion  about  the  preservation  of  the  Union." 

(This  was  written  in  February,  1837.) 
Before  he  had  reached  the  age  of  nineteen 
he  thus  declared  his  independence  of  for 
eign  opinion,  while  asserting  its  general 
sway  over  American  literature,  in  1836  :  — 

"  We  are,  as  it  were,  but  colonies.  True,  we 
have  declared  our  independence,  and  gained  our 
liberty,  but  we  have  dissolved  only  the  political 
bands  which  connected  us  with  Great  Britain ; 
though  we  have  rejected  her  tea,  she  still  sup 
plies  us  with  food  for  the  mind.  The  aspirant 
to  fame  must  breathe  the  atmosphere  of  foreign 
parts,  and  learn  to  talk  about  things  which  the 
homebred  student  never  dreamed  of,  if  he  would 
have  his  talents  appreciated  or  his  opinion  re 
garded  by  his  countrymen.  Ours  are  authors  oi 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      161 

the  day,  they  bid  fair  to  outlive  their  works  ; 
they  are  too  fashionable  to  write  for  posterity. 
True,  there  are  some  amongst  us,  who  can  con 
template  the  babbling  brook,  without,  in  imagi 
nation,  polluting  its  waters  with  a  mill-wheel ; 
but  even  they  are  prone  to  sing  of  skylarks  and 
nightingales  perched  on  hedges,  to  the  neglect  of 
the  homely  robin-redbreast  and  the  straggling 
rail-fences  of  their  own  native  land." 

So  early  did  he  take  this  position,  from 
which  he  never  varied. 

In  May,  1837,  we  find  another  note  of 
his  opening  life,  in  an  essay  on  Paley's 
"  Common  Reasons."  He  says  :  — 

"  Man  does  not  wantonly  rend  the  meanest  tie 
that  binds  him  to  his  fellows ;  he  would  not  stand 
aloof,  even  in  his  prejudices,  did  not  the  stern 
demands  of  truth  require  it.  He  is  ready  enough 
to  float  with  the  tide,  and  when  he  does  stem  the 
current  of  popular  opinion,  sincerity,  at  least, 
must  nerve  his  arm.  He  has  not  only  the  burden 
of  proof,  but  that  of  reproof  to  support.  We 
may  call  him  a  fanatic,  an  enthusiast ;  but  these 
are  titles  of  honor ;  they  signify  the  devotion 
and  entire  surrendering  of  himself  to  his  cause. 
So  far  as  my  experience  goes,  man  never  seri 
ously  maintained  an  objectionable  principle,  doc 
trine,  or  theory  ;  error  never  had  a  sincere  de 
ll 


162  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

fender ;  her  disciples  were  never  enthusiasts. 
This  is  strong  language,  I  confess,  but  I  do  not 
rashly  make  use  of  it.  We  are  told  that  *  to  err 
is  human,'  but  I  would  rather  call  it  inhuman,  if 
I  may  use  the  word  in  this  sense.  I  speak  not 
of  those  errors  that  have  to  do  with  facts  and  oc 
currences,  but  rather,  errors  of  judgment." 

Here  we  have  that  bold  generalization 
and  that  calm  love  of  paradox  which  mark 
his  later  style.  The  lofty  imagination  was 
always  his,  too,  as  where  this  youth  of  nine 
teen  says  in  the  same  essay  :  — 

"  Mystery  is  yet  afar  off,  —  it  is  but  a  cloud  in 
the  distance,  whose  shadow,  as  it  flits  across  the 
landscape,  gives  a  pleasing  variety  to  the  scene. 
But  as  the  perfect  day  approaches,  its  morning 
light  discovers  the  dark  and  straggling  clouds, 
which  at  first  skirted  the  horizon,  assembling  as 
at  a  signal,  and  as  they  expand  and  multiply, 
rolling  slowly  onward  to  the  zenith,  till,  at  last, 
the  whole  heavens,  if  we  except  a  faint  glimmer 
ing  in  the  East,  are  overshadowed." 

What  a  confident  and  flowing  movement 
of  thought  is  here !  like  the  prose  of  Milton 
or  Jeremy  Taylor,  but  with  a  more  re 
strained  energy. 

"  Duty,"  writes  the  young  moralist  in  another 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      163 

essay  of  1837,  "is  one  and  invariable;  it  re 
quires  no  impossibilities,  nor  can  it  ever  be  dis 
regarded  with  impunity  ;  so  far  as  it  exists,  it  is 
binding ;  and,  if  all  duties  are  binding,  so  as  on 
no  account  to  be  neglected,  how  can  one  bind 
stronger  than  another  ?  "  "  None  but  the  highest 
minds  can  attain  to  moral  excellence.  With  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  mankind  religion  is  a 
habit ;  or  rather  habit  is  religion.  However  par 
adoxical  it  may  seem,  it  appears  to  me  that  to 
reject  religion  is  the  first  step  towards  moral  ex 
cellence  ;  at  least  no  man  ever  attained  to  the 
highest  degree  of  the  latter  by  any  other  road. 
Could  infidels  live  double  the  number  of  years 
allotted  to  other  mortals,  they  would  become 
patterns  of  excellence.  So,  too,  of  all  true  poets, 
— they  would  neglect  the  beautiful  for  the  true." 
I  suspect  that  Thoreau's  first  poems 
date  from  the  year  1836-37,  since  the 
"big  red  journal,"  in  which  they  were 
copied,  was  begun  in  October,  1837.  The 
verses  entitled,  "To  the  Maiden  in  the 
East,"  were  by  no  means  among  the  first, 
which  date  from  1836  or  earlier ;  but  near 
these  in  time  was  that  poem  called  "  Sympa 
thy,"  which  was  the  first  of  his  writings  to  ap 
pear  in  Mr.  Emerson's  "  Dial."  These  last 
were  addressed,  we  are  told,  to  Ellen  Sewall, 


164  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

with  whom,  the  legend  says,  both  Henry 
and  John  Thoreau  were  in  love.  Few  of 
these  poems  show  any  imitation  of  Mr. 
Emerson,  whose  own  verses  at  that  time 
were  mostly  unpublished,  though  he  some 
times  read  them  in  private  to  his  friends. 
But  like  most  of  Thoreau's  verses,  these  in 
dicate  a  close  familiarity  with  the  Eliza 
bethan  literature,  and  what  directly  followed 
it,  in  the  time  of  the  Stuarts.  The  measure 
of  "Sympathy"  was  that  of  Davenant's 
"  Gondibert,"  which  Thoreau,  almost  alone 
of  his  contemporaries,  had  read  ;  the  thought 
was  above  Davenant,  and  ranged  with  Ra 
leigh  and  Spenser.  These  verses  will  not 
soon  be  forgotten  :  — 

"Lately,  alas!  I  knew  a  gentle  boy, 

Whose  features  all  were  cast  in  Virtue's  mould, 
As  one  she  had  designed  for  Beauty's  toy, 

But  after  manned  him  for  her  own  stronghold. 

"  Say  not  that  Caesar  was  victorious, 

With  toil  and  strife  who  stormed  the  House  of 

Fame; 

In  other  sense  this  youth  was  glorious, 
Himself  a  kingdom  wheresoe'er  he  came. 


Eternity  may  not  the  chance  repeat, 
But  I  must  tread  my  single  way  alone, 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      165 

In  sad  remembrance  that  we  once  did  meet, 
And  know  that  bliss  irrevocably  gone. 

The  spheres  henceforth  my  elegy  shall  sing, 

For  ele^y  has  other  subject  none; 
Each  strain  of  music  in  my  ears  shall  ring 

Knell  of  departure  from  that  other  one. 


"  Is 't  then  too  late  the  damage  to  repair  ? 

Distance,  forsooth,  from  my  weak  grasp  hath  reft 
The  empty  husk,  and  clutched  the  useless  tare, 
But  in  my  hands  the  wheat  and  kernel  left. 

"  If  I  but  love  that  virtue  which  he  is, 

Though  it  be  scented  in  the  morning  air, 
Still  shall  we  be  dearest  acquaintances, 
Nor  mortals  know  a  sympathy  more  rare." 

The  other  poem  seems  to  have  been  writ 
ten  later  than  the  separation  of  which  that 
one  so  loftily  speaks ;  and  it  vibrates  with 
a  tenderer  chord  than  sympathy.  It  be 
gins,  — 

"  Low  in  the  eastern  sky 
Is  set  thy  glancing  eye," 

and  then  it  goes  on  with  the  picture  of 
lover-like  things,  —  the  thrushes  and  the 
flowers,  until,  he  says, 

"  The  trees  a  welcome  waved, 
And  lakes  their  margin  laved, 
When  thy  free  mind 
To  my  retreat  did  wind." 


166  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

Then  comes   the  Persian  dialect  of  high 
love :  — 

"  It  was  a  summer  eve,  — 
The  air  did  gently  heave, 
While  yet  a  low-hung  cloud 
Thy  eastern  skies  did  shroud  ; 
The  lightning's  silent  gleam 
Startling  my  drowsy  dream, 
Seemed  like  the  flash 
Under  thy  dark  eyelash. 


"  I  '11  be  thy  Mercury, 
Thou,  Cytherea  to  me,  — 
Distinguished  by  thy  face 
The  earth  shall  learn  my  place.     , 
As  near  beneath  thy  light 
Will  I  outwear  the  night, 
With  mingled  ray 
Leading  the  westward  way." 

"  Let  us,"  said  Hafiz,  "  break  up  the  tire 
some  roof  of  heaven  into  new  forms,"  — 
and  with  as  bold  a  flight  did  this  young 
poet  pass  to  his  "  stellar  duties."  Then 
dropping  to  the  Concord  meadow  again, 
like  the  tuneful  lark,  he  chose  a  less  celes 
tial  path 

"  Of  gentle  slope  and  wide, 
As  thou  wert  by  my  side ; 
I  '11  walk  with  gentle  pace, 
And  choose  the  smoothest  place, 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      167 

And  careful  dip  the  oar, 
And  shun  the  winding  shore, 
And  gently  steer  my  boat 
Where  water-lilies  float, 
And  cardinal  flowers 
Stand  in  their  sylvan  bowers/' 

A  frivolous  question  has  sometimes  been 
raised  whether  the  young  Thoreau  knew 
what  love  was,  like  the  Sicilian  shepherd, 
who  found  him  a  native  of  the  rocks,  a  lion's 
whelp.  With  his  poet-nature,  he  early 
gathered  this  experience,  and  passed  on; 
praising  afterwards  the  lion's  nature  in  the 
universal  god:  — 

"  Implacable  is  Love,  — 
Foes  may  be  bought  or  teased 

From  their  hostile  intent,  — 
But  he  goes  unappeased 

Who  is  on  kindness  bent. 

"  There 's  nothing  in  the  world,  I  know,     ' 

That  can  escape  from  Love, 
For  every  depth  it  goes  below, 
And  every  height  above." 

The  Red  Journal  of  five  hundred  and 
ninety-six  long  pages,  in  which  the  early 
verses  occur,  was  the  first  collection  of  Tho- 
reau's  systematic  diarizing.  It  ran  on  from 
October,  1837,  to  June,  1840,  and  was  sue- 


168  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ceeded  by  another  journal  of  three  hundred 
and  ninety-six  pages,  which  was  finished 
early  in  1841.  He  wrote  his  first  lecture 
(on  Society)  in  March,  1838,  and  read  it 
before  the  Concord  Lyceum  in  the  Free 
masons'  Hall,  April  11,  1838.  In  the  De 
cember  following  he  wrote  a  memorable  es 
say  on  "  Sound  and  Silence,"  and  in  Feb 
ruary,  1840,  wrote  his  "  first  printed  paper 
of  consequence,"  as  he  says,  on  "  Aulus  Per- 
sius  Flaccus."  The  best  of  the  early  verses 
seem  to  have  been  written  in  1836-41.  His 
contributions  to  the  "Dial,"  which  he  helped 
edit,  were  taken  from  his  journals,  and  ran 
through  nearly  every  number  from  July, 
1840,  to  April,  1844,  when  that  magazine 
ceased. 

For  these  papers  he  received  nothing  but 
the  thanks  of  Emerson  and  the  praise  of  a 
few  readers.  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody,  in 
February,  1843,  wrote  to  Thoreau,  that 
"  the  regular  income  of  the  (  Dial '  does  not 
pay  the  cost  of  its  printing  and  paper ;  yet 
there  are  readers  enough  to  support  it,  if 
they  would  only  subscribe  ;  and  they  will 
subscribe,  if  they  are  convinced  that  only 
by  doing  so  can  they  secure  its  continu- 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      169 

ance."     They  did  not  subscribe,  and  in  the 
spring  of  1844  it  came  to  an  end. 

In  1842  Thoreau  took  a  walk  to  Wachu- 
sett,  his  nearest  mountain,  and  the  journal 
of  this  excursion  was  printed  in  the  "  Boston 
Miscellany  "  of  1843.  In  it  occurred  the 
verses,  written  at  least  as  early  as  1841,  in 
which  he  addresses  the  mountains  of  his 
horizon,  Monadnoc,  Wachusett,  and  the  Pe 
terborough  Hills  of  New  Hampshire.  These 
verses  were  for  some  time  in  the  hands  of 
Margaret  Fuller,  for  publication  in  the 
"  Dial,"  if  she  saw  fit,  but  she  returned 
them  with  the  following  characteristic  let 
ter, —  the  first  addressed  by  her  to  Tho 
reau  :  — 

"  [CONCORD]  18^  October,  1841. 
"  I  do  not  find  the  poem  on  the  mountains  im 
proved  by  mere  compression,  though  it  might  be 
by  fusion  and  glow.  Its  merits  to  me  are,  a 
noble  recognition  of  Nature,  two  or  three  manly 
thoughts,  and,  in  one  place,  a  plaintive  music. 
The  image  of  the  ships  does  not  please  me  orig 
inally.  It  illustrates  the  greater  by  the  less,  and 
affects  me  as  when  Byron  compares  the  light  on 
Jura  to  that  of  the  dark  eye  of  woman.  I  can 
not  define  my  position  here,  and  a  large  class  of 
readers  would  differ  from  me.  As  the  poet  goes 
on  to  — 


170  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

"  Unhewn  primeval  timber, 
For  knees  so  stiff,  for  masts  so  limber." 

he  seems  to  chase  an  image,  already  rather  forced, 
into  conceits. 

"  Yet,  now  that  I  have  some  knowledge  of  the 
man,  it  seems  there  is  no  objection  I  could  make 
to  his  lines  (with  the  exception  of  such  offenses 
against  taste  as  the  lines  about  the  humors  of  the 
eye,  as  to  which  we  are  already  agreed),  which  I 
would  not  make  to  himself.  He  is  healthful, 
rare,  of  open  eye,  ready  hand,  and  noble  scope. 
He  sets  no  limits  to  his  life,  nor  to  the  invasions 
of  nature ;  he  is  not  willfully  pragmatical,  cau 
tious,  ascetic,  or  fantastical.  But  he  is  as  yet  a 
somewhat  bare  hill,  which  the  warm  gales  of 
Spring  have  not  visited.  Thought  lies  too  de 
tached,  truth  is  seen  too  much  in  detail ;  we  can 
number  and  mark  the  substances  imbedded  in 
the  rock.  Thus  his  verses  are  startling  as  much 
as  stern ;  the  thought  does  not  excuse  its  con 
scious  existence  by  letting  us  see  its  relation  with 
life ;  there  is  a  want  of  fluent  music.  Yet  what 
could  a  companion  do  at  present,  unless  to  tame 
the  guardian  of  the  Alps  too  early  ?  Leave  him 
at  peace  amid  his  native  snows.  He  is  friendly  ; 
he  will  find  the  generous  office  that  shall  educate 
him.  It  is  not  a  soil  for  the  citron  and  the  rose, 
but  for  the  whortleberry,  the  pine,  or  the  heather. 

"  The   unfolding   of   affections,   a   wider   and 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      171 

deeper  human  experience,  the  harmonizing  influ 
ences  of  other  natures,  will  mould  the  man  and 
melt  his  verse.  He  will  seek  thought  less  and 
find  knowledge  the  more.  I  can  have  no  advice 
or  criticism  for  a  person  so  sincere ;  but,  if  I 
give  my  impression  of  him,  I  will  say,  '  He  says 
too  constantly  of  Nature,  she  is  mine.'  She  is 
not  yours  till  you  have  been  more  hers.  Seek 
the  lotus,  and  take  a  draught  of  rapture.  Say 
not  so  confidently,  all  places,  all  occasions  are 
alike.  This  will  never  come  true  till  you  have 
found  it  false. 

"  I  do  not  know  that  I  have  more  to  say  now ; 
perhaps  these  words  will  say  nothing  to  you.  If 
intercourse  should  continue,  perhaps  a  bridge 
may  be  made  between  two  minds  so  widely 
apart ;  for  I  apprehended  you  in  spirit,  and  you 
did  not  seem  to  mistake  me  so  widely  as  most  of 
your  kind  do.  If  you  should  find  yourself  in 
clined  to  write  to  me,  as  you  thought  you  might, 
I  dare  say,  many  thoughts  would  be  suggested  to 
me ;  many  have  already,  by  seeing  you  from  day 
to  day.  Will  you  finish  the  poem  in  your  own 
way,  and  send  it  for  the  *  Dial '  ?  Leave  out 

"And  seem  to  milk  the  sky/' 

The  image  is  too  low ;  Mr.  Emerson  thought  so 
too. 
"Farewell!     May    truth    be    irradiated    by 


172  HENRY  D.   THOREAV. 

Beauty  !  Let  me  know  whether  you  go  to  \>he 
lonely  hut,1  and  write  to  me  about  Shakespeare, 
if  you  read  him  there,  I  have  many  thoughts 
about  him,  which  I  have  never  yet  been  led  to 
express.  MARGARET  F, 

"The  penciled  paper  Mr.  E.  put  into  my 
hands,  I  have  taken  the  liberty  to  copy  it. 
You  expressed  one  day  my  own  opinion,  —  that 
the  moment  such  a  crisis  is  passed,  we  may  speak 
of  it.  There  is  no  need  of  artificial  delicacy,  of 
secrecy ;  it  keeps  its  own  secrets ;  it  cannot  be 
made  false.  Thus  you  will  not  be  sorry  that  I 
have  seen  the  paper.  Will  you  not  send  me  some 
other  records  of  the  good  week  ?  " 

"Faithful  are  the  wounds  of  a  friend." 
This  searching  criticism  would  not  offend 
Thoreau ;  nor  yet  the  plainness  with  which 
the  same  tongue  told  the  faults  of  a  prose 
paper  —  perhaps  "The  Service," — which 
Margaret  rejected  in  this  note  :  — 

"  [CONCORD]  1st  December  (1841). 
"I  am  to  blame  for  so  long  detaining    your 
manuscript.     But  my  thoughts  have  been  so  en 
gaged  that  I  have  not  found  a  suitable  hour  to  re 
read  it  as  I  wished,  till  last  night.     This  second 
reading  only  confirms  my  impression  from  the 
1  The  HolloweU  Place,  no  doubt. 


EARLY  ESSAYS  IN  AUTHORSHIP.      173 

6rst.  The  essay  is  rich  in  thoughts,  and  I  should 
be  pained  not  to  meet  it  again.  But  then,  the 
thoughts  seem  to  me  so  out  of  their  natural  order, 
that  I  cannot  read  it  through  without  pain.  I 
never  once  feel  myself  in  a  stream  of  thought,  but 
seem  to  hear  the  grating  of  tools  on  the  mosaic. 
It  is  true,  as  Mr.  Emerson  says,  that  essays  not  to 
be  compared  with  this  have  found  their  way  into 
the  *  Dial.''  But  then,  these  are  more  unassum 
ing  in  their  tone,  and  have  an  air  of  quiet  good- 
breeding,  which  induces  us  to  permit  their  pres 
ence.  Yours  is  so  rugged  that  it  ought  to  be 
commanding." 

These  were  the  years  of  Thoreau's  ap 
prenticeship  in  literature,  and  many  were 
the  tasks  and  mortifications  he  must  endure 
before  he  became  a  master  of  the  writer's 
art. 


CHAPTER  VH. 

FRIENDS  AND    COMPANIONS. 

"  MARGARET  FULLER,"  says  William 
Henry  Charming,  "  was  indeed  The  Friend ; 
this  was  her  vocation."  It  was  no  less  the 
vocation  of  Thoreau,  though  in  a  more 
lofty,  unvarying,  and  serene  manner. 

"Literally,"  says  the  friend  who  best  knew 
him,  "  his  views  of  friendship  were  high  and 
noble.  Those  who  loved  him  never  had  the  least 
reason  to  regret  it.  He  made  no  useless  profes 
sions,  never  asked  one  of  those  questions  that 
destroy  all  relation ;  but  he  was  on  the  spot  at 
the  time,  and  had  so  much  of  human  life  in  his 
keeping  to  the  last,  that  he  could  spare  a  breath 
ing-place  for  a  friend.  He  meant  friendship,  and 
meant  nothing  else,  and  stood  by  it  without  the 
slightest  abatement ;  not  veering  as  a  weather 
cock  with  each  shift  of  a  friend's  fortune,  nor 
like  those  who  bury  their  early  friendships,  in 
order  to  make  room  for  fresh  corpses." 

It  is,  therefore,  impossible  to  sketch  him 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  175 

by  himself.     He  could  have  said,  with  El- 
lery  Charming,  — 

"  0  band  of  Friends,  ye  breathe  within  this  space, 
And  the  rough  finish  of  a  humble  man 
By  your  kind  touches  rises  into  art." 

His  earliest  companion  was  his  brother 
John,  "a  flowing  generous  spirit,"  as  one 
described  him,  for  whom  his  younger 
brother  never  ceased  to  grieve.  Walking 
among  the  Cohasset  rocks  and  looking  at 
the  scores  of  shipwrecked  men  from  the 
Irish  brig  St.  John,  in  1849,  he  said,  "  A 
man  can  attend  but  one  funeral  in  his  life, 
can  behold  but  one  corpse."  With  him  it 
was  the  funeral  of  John  Thoreau  in  Febru 
ary,  1842.  They  had  made  the  voyage  of 
the  Concord  and  Merrimac  together,  in 
1839 ;  they  had  walked  and  labored  to 
gether,  and  invented  Indian  names  for  one 
another  from  boyhood.  John  was  "  Sachem 
Hopeful  of  Hopewell,"  —  a  sunny  soul,  al 
ways  serene  and  loving.  When  publishing 
his  first  book,  in  1849,  Henry  dedicated  it 
to  this  brother,  with  the  simple  verse  — 

"  Where'er  thou  sail'st  who  sailed  with  me, 
Though  now  thou  climbest  loftier  mounts, 
And  fairer  rivers  dost  ascend, 
Be  thou  my  Muse,  my  Brother  John." 


176  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

John  Thoreau's  death  was  singular  and 
painful ;  his  brother  could  not  speak  of  it 
without  physical  suffering,  so  that  when  he 
related  it  to  his  friend  Ricketson  at  New 
Bedford,  he  turned  pale  and  was  forced  to 
go  to  the  door  for  air.  This  was  the  only 
time  Mr.  Ricketson  ever  saw  him  show  deep 
emotion.  His  sister  Sophia  once  said :  — 

"  Henry  rarely  spoke  of  dear  John ;  it  pained 
him  too  much.  He  sent  the  following  verses 
from  Staten  Island  in  May,  1843,  the  year  after 
John's  death,  in  a  letter  to  Helen.  You  will  see 
that  they  apply  to  himself  :  "  — 

"  Brother,  where  dost  thou  dwell  ? 

What  sun  shines  for  thee  now  ? 
Dost  thou,  indeed,  fare  well, 
As  we  wished  here  below  1 

"What  season  didst  thou  find? 

'T  was  winter  here. 
Are  not  the  Fates  more  kind 
Than  they  appear  ? 

"  Is  thy  brow  clear  again, 

As  in  thy  youthful  years  ? 
And  was  that  ugly  pain 
The  summit  of  thy  fears  ? 

"  Yet  thou  wast  cheery  still ; 

They  could  not  quench  thy  fire ; 
Thou  didst  abide  their  will, 
And  then  retire. 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.          177 

"Where  chiefly  shall  I  look 

To  feel  thy  presence  near  ? 

Along  the  neighboring  brook 

May  I  thy  voice  still  hear  ? 

"  Dost  thou  still  haunt  the  brink 

Of  yonder  river's  tide  ? 
And  may  I  ever  think 

That  thou  art  by  my  side  ? 

"  What  bird  wilt  thou  employ 

To  bring  me  word  of  thee  ? 
For  it  would  give  them  joy,  — 

'T  would  give  them  liberty, 
To  serve  their  former  lord 

With  wing  and  minstrelsy. 

"  A  sadder  strain  mixed  with  their  song, 

They  've  slowlier  built  their  nests ; 
Since  thou  art  gone 
Their  lively  labor  rests. 

"  Where  is  the  finch,  the  thrush 

I  used  to  hear  ? 
Ah,  they  could  well  abide 
The  dying  year. 

"Now  they  no  more  return, 

I  hear  them  not ; 
They  have  remained  to  mourn ; 
Or  else  forgot." 

Before  the  death  of  his  brother,  Thoreau 
had    formed    the    friendship   with    Ellery 
12 


178  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

Channing,  that  was  in  some  degree  to  re 
place  the  daily  intimacy  he  had  enjoyed 
with  John  Thoreau.  This  man  of  genius, 
and  of  the  moods  that  sometimes  make 
genius  an  unhappy  boon,  was  a  year  younger 
than  Thoreau  when  he  came,  in  1843,  to 
dwell  in  Concord  with  his  bride,  a  younger 
sister  of  Margaret  Fuller.  They  lived  first 
in  a  cottage  near  Mr.  Emerson's,  Thoreau 
being  at  that  time  an  inmate  of  Mr.  Emer 
son's  household;  afterwards,  in  1843,  Mr. 
Channing  removed  to  a  hill-top  some  miles 
away,  then  to  New  York  in  1844-45,  then 
to  Europe  for  a  few  months,  and  finally  to 
a  house  on  the  main  street  of  the  village, 
opposite  the  last  residence  of  the  Thoreau 
family,  where  Henry  lived  from  1850  till 
his  death  in  1862.  In  the  garden  of  Mr. 
Channing's  house,  which  lay  on  the  river, 
Thoreau  kept  his  boat,  under  a  group  of 
willows,  and  from  that  friendly  harbor  all 
his  later  voyages  were  made.  At  times 
they  talked  of  occupying  this  house  to 
gether. 

"  I  have  an  old  house  and  a  garden  patch," 
said  Channing,  "  you  have  legs  and  arms,  and  we 
both  need  each  other's  companionship.  These 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  179 

miserable  cracks  and  crannies  which  have  made 
the  wall  of  life  look  thin  and  fungus-like,  will 
be  cemented  by  the  sweet  and  solid  mortar  of 
friendship." 

They  did  in  fact  associate  more  closely 
than  if  they  had  lived  in  the  same  house. 

At  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  when  contem 
plating  a  removal  from  the  neighborhood 
of  his  friend  Thoreau,  this  humorous  man 
of  letters  thus  described  himself  and  his 
tastes  to  another  friend  :  — 

"  I  am  a  poet,  or  of  a  poetical  temper  or  mood, 
with  a  very  limited  income  both  of  brains  and  of 
moneys.  This  world  is  rather  a  sour  world.  But 
as  I  am,  equally  with  you,  an  admirer  of  Cowper, 
why  should  I  not  prove  a  sort  of  unnecessary  ad 
dition  to  your  neighborhood  possibly  ?  I  may 
leave  Concord,  and  my  aim  would  be  to  get  a 
small  place,  in  the  vicinity  of  a  large  town,  with 
some  land,  and,  if  possible,  near  to  some  one  per 
son  with  whom  I  might  in  some  measure  frater 
nize.  Come,  my  neighbor  !  thou  hast  now  a  new 
occupation,  the  setting  up  of  a  poet  and  literary 
man,  —  one  who  loves  old  books,  old  garrets,  old 
winess  old  pipes,  and  (last  not  least)  Cowper, 
We  might  pass  the  winter  in  comparing  variorum 
editions  of  our  favorite  authors,  and  the  summer  in 
walking  and  horticulture-  This  is  a  grand  scheme 


180  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

of  life.  All  it  requires  is  the  house  of  which  I 
spake.  I  think  one  in  middle  life  feels  averse 
to  change,  and  especially  to  local  change.  The 
Lares  and  Penates  love  to  establish  themselves, 
and  desire  no  moving.  But  the  fatal  hour  may 
come,  when,  bidding  one  long,  one  last  adieu  to 
those  weather-beaten  Penates,  we  sally  forth  with 
Don  Quixote,  once  more  to  strike  our  lances  into 
some  new  truth,  or  life,  or  man." 

This  hour  did  come,  and  the  removal 
was  made  for  a  few  months  or  years,  dur 
ing  which  the  two  friends  met  at  odd  inter 
vals,  and  in  queer  companionship.  But  the 
"  sweet  and  solid  mortar  of  friendship  "  was 
never  broken,  though  the  wall  of  life  came 
to  look  like  a  ruin.  When,  in  Thoreau's 
last  illness,  Channing,  in  deep  grief,  said 
"  that  a  change  had  come  over  the  dream 
of  life,  and  that  solitude  began  to  peer  out 
curiously  from  the  dells  and  wood-roads," 
Thoreau  whispered,  "  with  his  foot  on  the 
step  of  the  other  world,"  says  Channing, 
"  It  is  better  some  things  should  end."  Of 
their  earlier  friendship,  and  of  Channing's 
poetic  gift,  so  admirable,  yet  so  little  ap 
preciated  by  his  contemporaries,  this  men. 
tion  occurs  in  a  letter  written  by  Thoreau 
In  March,  1856  :  — 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  181 

"  I  was  surprised  to  hear  the  other  day  that 
Charming  was  in  X.  When  he  was  here  last 
(in  December,  I  think),  he  said,  like  himself,  in 
answer  to  my  inquiry  where  he  lived,  <  that  he 
did  not  know  the  name  of  the  place  ; '  so  it  has 
remained  in  a  degree  of  obscurity  to  me.  I  am 
rejoiced  to  hear  that  you  are  getting  on  so  bravely 
with  him  and  his  verses.  He  and  I,  as  you  know, 
have  been  old  cronies,  — 

"  '  Fed  the  same  flock,  by  fountain,  shade,  and  rill, 
Together  both,  ere  the  high  lawns  appeared 
Under  the  opening  eyelids  of  the  morn, 
We  drove  afield,  and  both  together  heared/  etc. 

" '  But  O,  the  heavy  change,'  now  he  is  gone. 
The  Channing  you  have  seen  and  described  is 
the  real  Simon  Pure.  You  have  seen  him. 
Many  a  good  ramble  may  you  have  together! 
You  will  see  in  him  still  more  of  the  same  kind 
to  attract  and  to  puzzle  you.  How  to  serve  him 
most  effectually  has  long  been  a  problem  with  his 
friends.  Perhaps  it  is  left  for  you  to  solve  it. 
I  suspect  that  the  most  that  you  or  any  one 
can  do  for  him  is  to  appreciate  his  genius,  — 
to  buy  and  read,  and  cause  others  to  buy  and 
read  his  poems.  That  is  the  hand  which  he 
has  put  forth  to  the  world,  —  take  hold  of  that. 
Review  them  if  you  can,  —  perhaps  take  the  risk 
of  publishing  something  more  which  he  may 
write.  Your  knowledge  of  Cowper  will  help 


182  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

you  to  know  Charming.  He  will  accept  sympa 
thy  and  aid,  but  he  will  not  bear  questioning,  un 
less  the  aspects  of  the  sky  are  particularly  aus 
picious.  He  will  ever  be  *  reserved  and  enig 
matic/  and  you  must  deal  with  him  at  arm's 
length.  I  have  no  secrets  to  tell  you  concerning 
him,  and  do  not  wish  to  call  obvious  excellences 
and  defects  by  far-fetched  names.  Nor  need  I 
suggest  how  witty  and  poetic  he  is,  —  and  what 
an  inexhaustible  fund  of  good-fellowship  you  will 
find  in  him." 

In  the  record  of  his  winter  visitors  at 
Walden,  Thoreau  had  earlier  made  mention 
of  Channing,  who  then  lived  on  Ponkaw- 
tasset  Hill,  two  or  three  miles  away  from 
the  hermitage. 

"  He  who  came  from  farthest  to  my  lodge," 
says  Thoreau,  "  through  deepest  snows  and  most 
dismal  tempests,  was  a  poet.  A  farmer,  a  hun 
ter,  a  soldier,  a  reporter,  even  a  philosopher  may 
be  daunted,  but  nothing  can  deter  a  poet,  for  he 
is  actuated  by  pure  love.  Who  can  predict  his 
comings  and  goings  ?  His  business  calls  him  out 
at  all  hours ;  even  when  doctors  sleep.  We 
made  that  small  house  ring  with  boisterous  mirth, 
and  resound  with  the  murmur  of  much  sober 
talk,  —  making  amends  then  to  Walden  vale  for 
the  long  silences.  At  suitable  intervals  there 


FRIENDS  AND   COMPANIONS.  183 

were  regular  salutes  of  laughter,  which  might 
have  been  referred  indifferently  to  the  last  ut 
tered  or  the  forthcoming  jest." 

In  his  "  Week,"  as  Thoreau  floats  down 
the  Concord,  past  the  Old  Manse,  he  com 
memorates  first  Hawthorne  and  then  Chan- 
ning,  saying  of  the  latter,  — 

"  On  Ponkawtasset,  since,  with  such  delay, 
Down  this  still  stream  we  took  our  meadowy  way, 
A  poet  wise  hath  settled  whose  fine  ray 
Doth  faintly  shine  on  Concord's  twilight  day. 
Like  those  first  stars,  whose  silver  beams  on  high, 
Shining  more  brightly  as  the  day  goes  by, 
Most  travelers  cannot  at  first  descry, 
But  eyes  that  wont  to  range  the  evening  sky." 

These  were  true  and  deserved  compli 
ments,  but  they  availed  little  (no  more  than 
did  the  praises  of  Emerson  in  the  "  Dial," 
and  of  Hawthorne  in  his  "  Mosses ")  to 
make  Channing  known  to  the  general  read 
er.  Some  years  after  Thoreau's  death, 
when  writing  to  another  friend,  this  neg 
lected  poet  said :  — 

"  Is  there  no  way  of  disabusing  S.  of  the  lik 
ing  he  has  for  the  verses  I  used  to  write  ?  You 
probably  know  he  is  my  only  patron,  but  that 
is  no  reason  he  should  be  led  astray.  There  is  no 
other  test  of  the  value  of  poetry,  but  its  popular- 


184  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ity.  My  verses  have  never  secured  a  single 
reader  but  S.  He  really  believes,  I  think,  in 
those  so-called  verses  ;  but  they  are  not  good,  — 
they  are  wholly  unknown  and  unread,  and  always 
will  be.  Mediocre  poetry  is  worse  than  nothing, 
—  and  mine  is  not  even  mediocre.  I  have  pre 
sented  S.  with  the  last  set  of  those  little  books 
there  is,  to  have  them  bound,  if  he  will.  He  can 
keep  them  as  a  literary  curio,  and  in  his  old  age 
amuse  himself  with  thinking,  '  How  could  ever  I 
have  liked  these  ? '  " 

Yet  this  self-disparaging  poet  was  lie  who 
wrote,  — 

"  If  my  bark  sinks,  't  is  to  another  sea,"  — 

and  who  cried  to  his  companions,  — 

"  Ye  heavy-hearted  mariners 

Who  sail  this  shore,  — 
Ye  patient,  ye  who  labor, 

Sitting  at  the  sweeping  oar, 
And  see  afar  the  flashing  sea-gulls  play 
On  the  free  waters,  and  the  glad  bright  day 
Twine  with  his  hand  the  spray,  — 
From  out  your  dreariness, 
From  your  heart-weariness, 
I  speak,  for  I  am  yours 
On  these  gray  shores." 

It  is  he,  also,  who  has  best  told,  in  prose 
and  verse,  what  Thoreau  was  in  his  charac 
ter  and  his  literary  art.  In  dedicating  to 


FRIENDS  AND   COMPANIONS.  185 

his  friend  Henry,  the  poem  called  "  Near 
Home,"  published  in  1858,  Channing  thus 
addressed  him  :  — 

"  Modest  and  mild  and  kind, 
Who  never  spurned  the  needing  from  thy  door  — 
(Door  of  thy  heart,  which  is  a  palace-gate) ; 
Temperate  and  faithful,  —  in  whose  word  the  world 
Might  trust,  sure  to  repay  ;  unvexed  by  care, 
Unawed  by  Fortune's  nod,  slave  to  no  lord, 
Nor  coward  to  thy  peers,  —  long  shalt  thou  live ! 
Not  in  this  feeble  verse,  this  sleeping  age,  — 
But  in  the  roll  of  Heaven,  and  at  the  bar 
Of  that  high  court  where  Virtue  is  in  place, 
There  thou  shalt  fitly  rule,  and  read  the  laws 
Of  that  supremer  state,  —  writ  Jove's  behest, 
And  even  old  Saturn's  chronicle  ; 
Works  ne'er  Hesiod  saw,  —  types  of  all  things, 
And  portraitures  of  all  —  whose  golden  leaves, 
Roll  back  the  ages'  doors,  and  summon  up 
Unsleeping  truths,  by  which  wheels  on  Heaven's  prime." 

In  these  majestic  lines,  suggestive  of 
Dante,  of  Shakespeare,  and  of  Milton,  yet 
fitting,  by  the  force  of  imagination,  to  the 
simplicity  and  magnanimity  that  Thoreau 
had  displayed,  one  reads  the  secret  of  that 
character  which  made  the  Concord  recluse 
first  declare  to  the  world  the  true  mission  of 
John  Brown,  whose  friend  he  had  been  for 
a  few  years.  Of  Alcott  and  of  Hawthorne, 
of  Margaret  Fuller  and  Horace  Greeley, 


186  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

he  had  been  longer  the  friend  ;  and  in  the 
year  before  he  met  Brown  he  had  stood  face 
to  face  with  Walt  Whitman  in  Brooklyn. 
Mr.  Alcott's  testimony  to  Thoreau's  worth 
and  friendliness  has  been  constant. 

"  If  I  were  to  proffer  my  earnest  prayer  to  the 
gods  for  the  greatest  of  all  human  privileges,"  he 
said  one  day,  after  returning  from  an  evening 
spent  at  Walden  with  Thoreau,  "  it  should  be  for 
the  gift  of  a  severely  candid  friend.  To  most,  the 
presence  of  such  is  painfully  irksome ;  they  are 
lovers  of  present  reputation,  and  not  of  that  ex 
altation  of  soul  which  friends  and  discourse  were 
given  to  awaken  and  cherish  in  us.  Intercourse 
of  this  kind  I  have  found  possible  with  my  friends 
Emerson  and  Thoreau  ;  and  the  evenings  passed 
in  their  society  during  these  winter  months  have 
realized  my  conception  of  what  friendship,  when 
great  and  genuine,  owes  to  and  takes  from  its 
objects." 

Not  less  emphatic  was  Thoreau's  praise 
of  Mr.  Alcott,  after  these  long  winter  even 
ings  with  him  in  the  hut :  — 

"  One  of  the  last  of  the  philosophers,"  he 
writes  in  "Walden," — "Connecticut  gave  him 
to  the  world,  — he  peddled  first  her  wares,  after 
wards,  as  he  declares,  his  brains.  These  he  ped« 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  187 

dies  still,  prompting  God  and  disgracing  man, 
bearing  for  fruit  his  brain  only,  like  the  nut  its 
kernel.  I  think  he  must  be  the  man  of  the  most 
faith  of  any  alive.  His  words  and  attitude  always 
suppose  a  better  state  of  things  than  other  men 
are  acquainted  with,  and  he  will  be  the  last  man 
to  be  disappointed  as  the  ages  revolve.  He  has 
no  venture  in  the  present.  But  though  compar 
atively  disregarded  now,  laws  unsuspected  by 
most  will  take  effect,  and  masters  of  families  and 
rulers  will  come  to  him  for  advice.  A  true  friend 
of  man  ;  almost  the  only  friend  of  human  prog 
ress.  He  is  perhaps  the  sanest  man  and  has  the 
fewest  crotchets  of  any  I  chance  to  know,  —  the 
same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  to-morrow.  Of  yore 
we  had  sauntered  and  talked,  and  effectually  put 
the  world  behind  us ;  for  he  was  pledged  to  no 
institution  in  it,  freeborn,  ingenuus.  Great 
Looker  !  great  Expecter  !  to  converse  with 
whom  was  a  New  England  Night's  Entertain 
ment.  Ah !  such  discourse  we  had,  hermit  and 
philosopher,  and  the  old  settler  I  have  spoken  of, 
—  we  three,  —  it  expanded  and  racked  my  little 
house." 

Nor  did  Thoreau  participate  in  such  dis 
course  at  Walden  alone,  but  frequented  Mr. 
Alcott's  conversations  at  Mr.  Emerson's 
house  in  Concord,  at  Hawthorne's  in  Sa- 


188  HENRY  V.   THOREAU. 

lem,  at  Marston  Watson's  in  Plymouth, 
at  Daniel  Ricketson's  in  New  Bedford,  and 
once  or  twice  in  Boston  and  New  York. 
With  Mr.  Alcott  and  Alice  Carey,  Tho- 
reau  visited  Horace  Greeley  at  Chappaqua, 
in  1856,  and  with  Mr.  Alcott  alone  he 
called  on  Walt  Whitman  in  Brooklyn  the 
same  year. 

Between  Hawthorne  and  Thoreau,  Ellery 
Channing  was  perhaps  the  interpreter,  for 
they  had  not  very  much  in  common,  though 
friendly  and  mutually  respectful.  The  boat 
in  which  Thoreau  made  his  voyage  of  1839, 
on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac,  came  after 
wards  into  Hawthorne's  possession,  and 
was  the  frequent  vehicle  for  Channing  and 
Hawthorne  as  they  made  those  excursions 
which  Hawthorne  has  commemorated. 
Channing  also  has  commemorated  those 
years  when  Hawthorne  spent  the  happiest 
hours  of  his  life  in  the  Old  Manse,  to  which 
he  had  removed  soon  after  his  marriage  in 
1842 :  — 

"  There  in  the  old  gray  house,  whose  end  we  see 
Half  peeping  through  the  golden  willow's  veil, 
Whose  graceful  twigs  make  foliage  through  the  year, 
My  Hawthorne  dwelt,  a  scholar  of  rare  worth, 
The  gentlest  man  that  kindly  nature  drew; 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  189 

New  England's  Chaucer,  Hawthorne  fitly  lives. 

His  tall,  compacted  figure,  ably  strung 

To  urge  the  Indian  chase  or  guide  the  way, 

Softly  reclining  'neath  the  aged  elm, 

Like  some  still  rock  looked  out  upon  the  scene, 

As  much  a  part  of  nature  as  itself." 

In  July,  1860,  writing  to  his  sister  So 
phia,  among  the  New  Hampshire  moun 
tains,  Thoreau  said :  — 

"  Mr.  Hawthorne  has  come  home.  I  went  to 
meet  him  the  other  evening  (at  Mr.  Emerson's), 
and  found  that  he  had  not  altered,  except  that  he 
was  looking  pretty  brown  after  his  voyage.  He 
is  as  simple  and  childlike  as  ever." 

This  was  upon  the  return  of  Hawthorne 
from  his  long  residence  abroad,  in  Eng 
land,  Portugal,  and  Italy.  Thoreau  died 
two  years  before  Hawthorne,  and  they  are 
buried  within  a  few  feet  of  each  other  in 
the  Concord  cemetery,  their  funerals  hav 
ing  proceeded  from  the  same  parish  church 
near  by. 

Of  Thoreau's  relations  with  Emerson, 
this  is  not  the  place  to  speak  in  full ;  it 
was,  however,  the  most  important,  if  not 
the  most  intimate,  of  all  his  friendships, 
and  that  out  of  which  the  others  mainly 


190  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

grew.  Their  close  acquaintance  began  in 
1837.  In  the  latter  part  of  April,  1841, 
Thoreau  became  an  inmate  of  Mr.  Emer 
son's  house,  and  remained  there  till,  in  the 
spring  of  1843,  he  went  for  a  few  months 
to  be  the  tutor  of  Mr.  William  Emerson's 
sons  at  Staten  Island.  In  1840,  while 
teaching  school  in  Concord,  Thoreau  seems 
to  have  been  fully  admitted  into  that  circle 
of  which  Emerson,  Alcott,  and  Margaret 
Fuller  were  the  leaders.  In  May,  1840, 
this  circle  met,  as  it  then  did  frequently, 
at  the  house  of  Mr.  Emerson,  to  converse 
on  "the  inspiration  of  the  Prophet  and 
Bard,  the  nature  of  Poetry,  and  the  causes 
of  the  sterility  of  Poetic  Inspiration  in  our 
age  and  country."  Mr.  Alcott,  in  his  diary, 
has  preserved  a  record  of  this  meeting,  and 
some  others  of  the  same  kind.  It  seems 
that  on  this  occasion  —  Thoreau  being  not 
quite  twenty-three  years  old,  Mr.  Alcott 
forty-one,  Mr.  Emerson  thirty-seven,  and 
Miss  Fuller  thirty  —  all  these  were  pres 
ent,  and  also  Jones  Very,  the  Salem  poet, 
Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge,  Dr.  C.  A.  Bartol,  Dr. 
Caleb  Stetson,  and  Robert  Bartlett  of 
Plymouth.  Bartlett  and  Very  were  grad 


FRIENDS  AND   COMPANIONS.  191 

nates  of  Harvard  a  year  before  Thoreau, 
and  afterwards  tutors  there  ;  indeed,  all  the 
company  except  Alcott  were  Cambridge 
scholars,  —  for  Margaret  Fuller,  without  en 
tering  college,  had  breathed  in  the  learned 
air  of  Cambridge,  and  gone  beyond  the  stu 
dents  who  were  her  companions.  I  find  no 
earlier  record  of  Thoreau's  participation  in 
these  meetings ;  but  afterward  he  was  often 
present.  In  May,  1839,  Mr.  Alcott  had 
held  one  of  his  conversations  at  the  house 
of  Thoreau's  mother,  but  no  mention  is 
made  of  Henry  taking  part  in  it.  At  a 
conversation  in  Concord  in  1846,  one  April 
evening,  Thoreau  came  in  from  his  Walden 
hermitage,  and  protested  with  some  vehe 
mence  against  Mr.  Alcott's  declaration  that 
Jesus  "  stood  in  a  more  tender  and  intimate 
nearness  to  the  heart  of  mankind  than  any 
character  in  life  or  literature."  Thoreau 
thought  he  "  asserted  this  claim  for  the  fair 
Hebrew  in  exaggeration  " ;  yet  he  could  say 
in  the  "  Week,"  "  It  is  necessary  not  to  be 
Christian  to  appreciate  the  beauty  and  sig 
nificance  of  the  life  of  Christ." 

This  earliest  of  his  volumes,  like  most  of 
his  writings,  is  a  record  of  his  friendships, 


192  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

and  in  it  we  find  that  high-toned,  paradox 
ical  essay  on  Love  and  Friendship,  which 
has  already  been  quoted.  To  read  this  lit 
erally,  as  Channing  says,  "  would  be  to  ac 
cuse  him  of  stupidity ;  he  gossips  there  of 
a  high,  imaginary  world."  But  its  tone  is 
no  higher  than  was  the  habitual  feeling  of 
Thoreau  towards  his  friends,  or  that  senti 
ment  which  he  inspired  in  them.  In  Mr. 
Alcott's  diary  for  March  16, 1847,  he  writes, 
two  years  before  the  "  Week "  was  made 
public  :  — 

"  This  evening  I  pass  with  Thoreau  at  his  her 
mitage  on  Walden,  and  he  reads  me  some  pas 
sages  from  his  manuscript  volume,  entitled  *  A 
Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers.' 
The  book  is  purely  American,  fragrant  with  the 
life  of  New  England  woods  and  streams,  and  could 
have  been  written  nowhere  else.  Especially  am 
I  touched  by  his  sufficiency  and  soundness,  his 
aboriginal  vigor,  —  as  if  a  man  had  once  more 
come  into  Nature  who  knew  what  Nature  meant 
him  to  do  with  her,  —  Virgil,  and  White  of  Sel- 
borne,  and  Izaak  Walton,  and  Yankee  settler  all 
in  one.  I  came  home  at  midnight,  through  the 
woody  snow-paths,  and  slept  with  the  pleasing 
dream  that  presently  the  press  would  give  me 
two  books  to  be  proud  of  —  Emerson's  '  Poems,' 
and  Thoreau's  <  Week.' " 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  193 

This  high  anticipation  of  the  young  au 
thor's  career  was  -fully  shared  by  Emerson 
himself,  who  everywhere  praised  the  genius 
of  Thoreau ;  and  when  in  England  in  1848, 
listened  readily  to  a  proposition  from  Dr. 
Chapman  the  publisher,  for  a  new  magazine 
to  be  called  "  The  Atlantic,"  and  printed  at 
the  same  time  in  London  and  in  Boston, 
whose  chief  contributors  in  England  should 
be  Froude,  Garth  Wilkinson,  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough,  and  perhaps  Carlyle  ;  and  in  New 
England,  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Alcott,  the 
Channings,  Theodore  Parker,  and  Elliott 
Cabot.  The  plan  came  to  nothing ,  but  it 
may  have  been  some  reminiscence  of  it 
which,  nine  years  afterward,  gave  its  name 
to  that  Boston  magazine,  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly."  Mr.  Emerson's  letter  was  dated 
in  London,  April  20,  1848,  and  said  :  — 

"  I  find  Chapman  very  anxious  to  publish  a 
journal  common  to  Old  and  New  England,  as 
was  long  ago  proposed.  Froude  and  Clough  and 
other  Oxonians  would  gladly  conspire.  Let  the 
'  Massachusetts  Quarterly '  give  place  to  this,  and 
we  should  have  two  legs,  and  bestride  the  sea. 
Here  I  know  so  many  good-minded  people  that 
I  am  sure  will  gladly  combine.  But  what  do  I, 
13 


194  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

or  does  any  friend  of  mine  in  America  care  for  a 
journal  ?  Not  enough,  I  fear,  to  secure  an  ener 
getic  work  on  that  side.  I  have  a  letter  from 
Cabot  lately  and  do  write  him  to-day.  'T  is  cer 
tain  the  Massachusetts  '  Quarterly  Review  '  will 
fail,  unless  Henry  Thoreau,  and  Alcott,  and 
Channing  and  JNewcome,  the  fourfold  visages,  fly 
to  the  rescue.  I  am  sorry  that  Alcott's  editor, 
the  Dumont  of  our  Bentham,  the  Baruch  of  our 
Jeremiah,  is  so  slow  to  be  born." 

In  1846,  before  Mr.  Emerson  went  abroad, 
we  find  Thoreau  (whose  own  hut  beside 
Walden  had  been  built  and  inhabited  for  a 
year)  sketching  a  design  for  a  lodge  which 
Mr.  Emerson  then  proposed  to  build  on  the 
opposite  shore.  It  was  to  be  a  retreat  for 
study  and  writing,  at  the  summit  of  a  ledge, 
with  a  commanding  prospect  over  the  level 
country,  towards  Monadnoc  and  Wachusett 
in  the  west  and  northwest.  For  this  look 
out  Mr.  Alcott  added  a  story  to  Thoreau's 
sketch ;  but  the  hermitage  was  never  built, 
and  the  plan  finally  resulted  in  a  rustic  sum 
mer-house,  erected  by  Alcott  with  some  aid 
from  Thoreau,  in  Mr.  Emerson's  garden,  in 
1847-48.1 

1  In  building  this  quaint  structure,  Thoreau  was  so 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  195 

Humbler  friends  than  poets  and  philos 
ophers  sometimes  shared  the  companionship 
of  these  brethren  in  Concord.  In  Febru 
ary,  1847,  Mr.  Alcott,  who  was  then  a 
woodman,  laboring  on  his  hillside  with  his 
own  axe,  where  afterwards  Hawthorne  wan 
dered  and  mused,  thus  notes  in  his  diary  an 
incident  not  unusual  in  the  town  :  — 

"  Our  friend  the  fugitive,  who  has  shared  now 
a  week's  hospitalities  with  us  (sawing  and  piling 
my  wood),  feels  this  new  trust  of  Freedom  yet 
unsafe  here  in  New  England,  and  so  has  left  us 
this  morning  for  Canada.  We  supplied  him 
with  the  means  of  journeying,  and  bade  him  God 
speed  to  a  freer  land.  His  stay  with  us  has 
given  image  and  a  name  to  the  dire  entity  of 
slavery." 

It  was  this  slave,  no  doubt,  who  had 
lodged  for  a  while  in  Thoreau's  Walden 
hut. 

My  own  acquaintance  with  Thoreau  did 
not  begin  with  our  common  hostility  to 
slavery,  which  afterwards  brought  us  most 
closely  together,  but  sprang  from  the  ac- 

averse  to  Mr.  Alcott's  plan  of  putting  up  and  tearing  down 
with  no  settled  design  of  form  on  paper,  that  he  with 
drew  his  mechanic  hand,  so  skillful  in  all  carpenter  work. 


196  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

cident  of  my  editing  for  a  few  weeks  the 
"  Harvard  Magazine,"  a  college  monthly,  in 
1854-55,  in  which  appeared  a  long  review 
of  "Walden"  and  the  "Week."  In  ac 
knowledgment  of  this  review,  which  was  lau 
datory  and  made  many  quotations  from  his 
two  volumes,  Thoreau,  whom  I  had  never 
seen,  called  at  my  room  in  Holworthy  Hall, 
Cambridge,  in  January,  1855,  and  left  there 
in  my  absence,  a  copy  of  the  "  Week  "  with 
a  message  implying  it  was  for  the  writer 
of  the  magazine  article.  It  so  happened 
that  I  was  in  the  College  Library  when 
Thoreau  was  calling  on  me,  and  when  he 
came,  directly  after,  to  the  Library,  some 
one  present  pointed  him  out  to  me  as  the 
author  of  "  Walden."  I  was  then  a  senior 
in  college,  and  soon  to  go  on  my  winter 
vacation ;  in  course  of  which  I  wrote  to 
Thoreau  from  my  native  town,  as  fol 
lows  :  — 

"  HAMPTON  FALLS,  N.  H.,  Jan'y  30th,  '55. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  had  it  in  mind  to 
write  you  a  letter  ever  since  the  day  when  you 
visited  me,  without  my  knowing  it,  at  Cambridge. 
I  saw  you  afterward  at  the  Library,  but  refrained 
from  introducing  myself  to  you,  in  the  hope  that 


FRIENDS  AND   COMPANIONS.  197 

I  should  see  you  later  in  the  day.  But  as  I  did 
not,  will  you  allow  me  to  seek  you  out,  when 
next  I  come  to  Concord? 

"  The  author  of  the  criticism  in  the  '  Harvard 
Magazine '  is  Mr.  Morton  of  Plymouth,  a  friend 
and  pupil  of  your  friend,  Marston  Watson,  of 
that  old  town.  Accordingly  I  gave  him  the  book 
which  you  left  with  me,  judging  that  it  belonged 
to  him.  He  received  it  with  delight,  as  a  gift  of 
value  in  itself,  and  the  more  valuable  for  the 
sake  of  the  giver. 

11  We  who  at  Cambridge  look  toward  Concord 
as  a  sort  of  Mecca  for  our  pilgrimages,  are  glad 
to  see  that  your  last  book  finds  such  favor  with 
the  public.  It  has  made  its  way  where  your  name 
has  rarely  been  heard  before,  and  the  inquiry, 
*  Who  is  Mr.  Thoreau  ? '  proves  that  the  book  has 
in  part  done  its  work.  For  my  own  part,  I  thank 
you  for  the  new  light  it  shows  me  the  aspects  of 
Nature  in,  and  for  the  marvelous  beauty  of  your 
descriptions.  At  the  same  time,  if  any  one  should 
ask  me  what  I  think  of  your  philosophy,  I 
should  be  apt  to  answer  that  it  is  not  worth  a 
straw.  Whenever  again  you  visit  Cambridge, 
be  assured,  sir,  that  it  would  give  me  much  pleas 
ure  to  see  you  at  my  room.  There,  or  in  Con 
cord,  I  hope  soon  to  see  you ;  if  I  may  intrude 
%o  much  on  your  time. 

"  Believe  me  always,  yours  very  truly, 

"  F.  B.  SANBORN." 


198  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

This  note,  which  I  had  entirely  forgotten, 
and  of  which  I  trust  my  friend  soon  forgave 
the  pertness,  came  to  me  recently  among  his 
papers;  with  one  exception,  it  is  the  only 
letter  that  passed  between  us,  I  think,  in 
an  acquaintance  of  more  than  seven  years. 
Some  six  weeks  after  its  date,  I  went  to 
live  in  Concord,  and  happened  to  take 
rooms  in  Mr.  Channing's  house,  just  across 
the  way  from  Thoreau's.  I  met  him  more 
than  once  in  March,  1855,  but  he  did  not 
call  on  my  sister  and  me  until  the  llth  of 
April,  when  I  made  the  following  brief 
note  of  his  appearance  :  — 

"  To-night  we  had  a  call  from  Mr.  Thoreau, 
who  came  at  eight  and  stayed  till  ten.  He  talked 
about  Latin  and  Greek  —  which  he  thought 
ought  to  be  studied  —  and  about  other  things. 
In  his  tones  and  gestures  he  seemed  to  me  to 
imitate  Emerson,  so  that  it  was  annoying  to  listen 
to  him,  though  he  said  many  good  things.  He 
looks  like  Emerson,  too,  —  coarser,  but  with 
something  of  that  serenity  and  sagacity  which  E. 
has.  Thoreau  looks  eminently  sagacious  —  like 
a  sort  of  wise,  wild  beast.  He  dresses  plainly, 
wears  a  beard  in  his  throat,  and  has  a  brown 
complexion." 


FRIENDS  AND  COMPANIONS.  199 

A  month  or  two  later  my  diary  expanded 
this  sketch  a  little,  with  other  particu 
lars  :  — 

"  He  is  a  little  under  size,  with  a  huge  Emer 
sonian  nose,  bluish  gray  eyes,  brown  hair,  and 
a  ruddy  weather-beaten  face,  which  reminds  me 
of  some  shrewd  and  honest  animal's  —  some  re 
tired  philosophical  woodchuck  or  magnanimous 
fox.  He  dresses  very  plainly,  wears  his  collar 
turned  over  like  Mr.  Emerson "  [we  young  col 
legians  then  wearing  ours  upright],  "  and  often 
an  old  dress-coat,  broad  in  the  skirts,  and  by  no 
means  a  n't.  He  walks  about  with  a  brisk,  rus 
tic  air,  and  never  seems  tired." 

Notwithstanding  the  slow  admiration  that 
these  trivial  comments  indicated,  our  friend 
ship  grew  apace,  and  for  two  years  or  more 
I  dined  with  him  almost  daily,  and  often 
joined  in  his  walks  and  river  voyages,  or 
swam  with  him  in  some  of  our  numerous 
Concord  waters.  In  1857  I  introduced 
John  Brown  to  him,  then  a  guest  at  my 
house ;  and  in  1859,  the  evening  before 
Brown's  last  birthday,  we  listened  together 
to  the  old  captain's  last  speech  in  the  Con 
cord  Town  Hall.  The  events  of  that  year 
and  the  next  brought  us  closely  together, 
andTfound'Rim  tne  stanchest  of  friends. 


200  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

This  chapter  might  easily  be  extended 
into  a  volume,  so  long  was  the  list  of  his 
companions,  and  so  intimate  and  perfect  his 
relation  with  them,  at  least  on  his  own 
side. 

"A  truth-speaker  he,"  said  Emerson  at  his 
funeral,  *'  capable  of  the  most  deep  and  strict 
conversation ;  a  physician  to  the  wounds  of  any 
soul ;  a  friend,  knowing  not  only  the  secret  of 
friendship,  but  almost  worshipped  by  those  few 
persons  who  resorted  to  him  as  their  confessor 
and  prophet,  and  knew  the  deep  value  of  his 
mind  and  great  heart.  His  soul  was  made  for 
the  noblest  society  ;  he  had  in  a  short  life  ex 
hausted  the  capabilities  of  this  world ;  where- 
ever  there  is  knowledge,  wherever  there  is  virtue, 
wherever  there  is  beauty,  he  will  find  a  home." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  WALDEN  HEKMITAGE. 

IT  is  by  his  two  years'  encampment  on 
the  shore  of  a  small  lake  in  the  Walden 
-woods,  a  mile  south  of  Concord  village,  that 
Thoreau  is  best  known  to  the  world  ;  and 
the  book  which  relates  how  he  lived  and 
what  he  saw  there  is  still,  as  it  always  was, 
the  most  popular  of  his  writings.  Like  all 
his  books,  it  contains  much  that  might  as 
well  have  been  written  on  any  other  sub 
ject  ;  but  it  also  describes  charmingly  the 
scenes  and  events  of  his  sylvan  life,  —  his 
days  and  nights  with  Nature.  He  spent 
two  years  and  a  half  in  this  retreat,  though 
often  coming  forth  from  it. 

The  localities  of  Concord  which  Thoreau 
immortalized  were  chiefly  those  in  the 
neighborhood  of  some  lake  or  stream,  — 
though  it  would  be  hard  to  find  in  that 
well-watered  town,  especially  in  spring 
time,  any  place  which  is  not  neighbor  either 


202  HENRY  D.   THOSE AU. 

to  the  nine-times  circling  river  Musketa* 
quid,  to  the  swifter  Assabet, 

"  That  like  an  arrowe  clear 
Through  Troy  rennest  aie  downward  to  the  sea,"  — 

to  Walden  or  White  Pond,  to  Bateman's 
Pond,  to  the  Mill  Brook,  the  Sanguinetto, 
the  Nut-Meadow,  or  the  Second  Division 
Brook.  All  these  waters  and  more  are  re 
nowned  again  and  again  in  Thoreau's  books. 
Like  Icarus,  the  ancient  high-flyer,  he  tried 
his  fortune  upon  many  a  river,  fiord,  stream 
let,  and  broad  sea,  — 

"  Where  still  the  shore  his  brave  attempt  resounds." 

He  gave  beauty  and  dignity  to  obscure 
places  by  his  mention  of  them ;  and  it  is 
curious  that  the  neighborhood  of  Walden,  — 
now  the  most  romantic  and  poetical  region 
of  Concord,  associated  in  every  mind  with 
this  tender  lover  of  Nature,  and  his  wor 
ship  of  her,  —  was  anciently  a  place  of 
dark  repute,  the  home  of  pariahs  and  law 
less  characters,  such  as  fringed  the  sober 
garment  of  many  a  New  England  village  in 
Puritanic  times. 

Close  by  Walden  is  Brister's  Hill,  where, 
in  the  early  days  of  emancipation  in  Massa- 


THE   WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  203 

chusetts,  the  newly  freed  slaves  of  Concord 
magnates  took  up  their  abode,  — 

"  The  wrathful  kings  on  cairns  apart," 

as  Ossian  says.  Here  dwelt  Cato  Ingraham, 
freedman  of  'Squire  Duncan  Ingraham, 
who,  when  yet  a  slave  in  his  master's  back 
yard,  on  the  day  of  Concord  fight,  was 
brought  to  a  halt  by  the  fierce  Major  Pit- 
cairn,  then  something  the  worse  for  'Squire 
Ingraham's  wine,  and  ordered  to  "  lay  down 
his  arms  and  disperse,"  as  the  rebels  at 
Lexington  had  been  six  hours  earlier.  Here 
also  abode  Zilpha,  a  black  Circe,  who  spun 
linen,  and  made  the  Walden  Woods  resound 
with  her  shrill  singing :  — 

"  Dives  inaccessos  ubi  Solis  filia  lucos 
Assiduo  resonat  cantu,  tectisque  superbis 
Urit  odoratam  nocturna  in  lumina  cedrum, 
Arguto  tenues  percurrens  pectine  telas." 

But  some  paroled  English  prisoners  in  the 
War  of  1812,  burnt  down  her  proud  abode, 
with  its  imprisoned  cat  and  dog  and  hens, 
while  Zilpha  was  absent.  Down  the  road 
towards  the  village  from  Cato's  farm  and 
Zilpha's  musical  loom  and  wheel,  lived 
Brister  Freeman,  who  gave  his  name  to 
the  hill,  —  Scipio  Brister,  "  a  handy  ne- 


204  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

gro,"  once  the  slave  of  'Squire  Cummings, 
but  long  since  emancipated,  and  in  Tho- 
reau's  boyhood  set  free  again  by  death,  and 
buried  in  an  old  Lincoln  graveyard,  near 
the  ancestor  of  President  Garfield,  but  still 
nearer  the  unmarked  graves  of  British  gren 
adiers,  who  fell  in  the  retreat  from  Concord. 
With  this  Scipio  Africanus  Brister  Liber- 
tinus,  in  the  edge  of  the  Walden  Woods, 
"  dwelt  Fenda,  his  hospitable  wife,  who 
told  fortunes,  yet  pleasantly  —  large,  round, 
and  black,  —  such  a  dusky  orb  as  never 
rose  on  Concord,  before  or  since,"  says 
Thoreau.  Such  was  the  African  colony  on 
the  south  side  of  Concord  village  among 
the  woods,  while  on  the  northern  edge  of 
the  village,  along  the  Great  Meadows,  there 
dwelt  another  colony,  headed  by  Caesar  Rob- 
bins,  whose  descendants  still  flit  about  the 
town.  Older  than  all  was  the  illustrious 
Guinea  negro,  John  Jack,  once  a  slave  on 
the  farm  which  is  now  the  glebe  of  the  Old 
Manse,  but  who  purchased  his  freedom 
about  the  time  the  Old  Manse  was  built  in 
1765-66.  He  survives  in  his  quaint  epi 
taph,  written  by  Daniel  Bliss,  the  young 
Tory  brother  of  the  first  mistress  of  the 


THE   WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  205 

manse    (Mrs.    William    Emerson,     grand 
mother  of  Emerson,  the  poet)  :  — 

"  God  wills  us  free,  Man  wills  us  slaves, 
I  will  as  God  wills :  God's  will  be  done. 

Here  lies  the  body  of 

JOHN  JACK, 

A  native  of  Africa,  who  died 

March,  1773,  aged  about  sixty  years. 

Though  born  in  a  land  of  slavery, 

He  was  born  free  ; 
Though  he  lived  in  a  land  of  liberty, 

He  lived  a  slave  ; 

Till  by  his  honest  though  stolen  labors 

He  acquired  the  source  of  slavery 

Which  gave  him  his  freedom ; 

Though  not  long  before 

Death  the  grand  tyrant 

Gave  him  his  final  emancipation, 

And  put  him  on  a  footing  with  kings. 

Though  a  slave  to  vice, 

He  practised  those  virtues 

Without  which  kings  are  but  slaves." 

This  epitaph,  and  the  anecdote  already 
given  concerning  Caesar  Robbins,  may  illus 
trate  the  humanity  and  humor  with  which 
the  freedmen  of  Concord  were  regarded, 
while  an  adventure  of  Scipio  Brister's,  in 


206  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

his  early  days  of  freedom,  may  show  the 
mixture  of  savage  fun  and  contempt  that 
also  followed  them,  and  which  some  of  their 
conduct  may  have  deserved. 

The  village  drover  and  butcher  once  had 
a  ferocious  bull  to  kill,  and  when  he  had 
succeeded  with  some  difficulty  in  driving 
him  into  his  slaughter-house,  on  the  Wai- 
den  road,  nobody  was  willing  to  go  in  and 
kill  him.  Just  then  Brister  Freeman,  from 
his  hill  near  Walden,  came  along  the  road, 
and  was  slyly  invited  by  the  butcher  to  go 
into  the  slaughter-house  for  an  axe, — being 
told  that  when  he  brought  it  he  should  have 
a  job  to  do.  The  unsuspecting  freedman 
opened  the  door  and  walked  in  ;  it  was  shut 
behind  him,  and  he  found  the  bull  drawn  up 
in  line  of  battle  before  him.  After  some 
pursuit  and  retreat  in  the  narrow  arena, 
Brister  spied  the  axe  he  wanted,  and  began 
attacking  his  pursuer,  giving  him  a  blow 
here  or  there  as  he  had  opportunity.  His 
employers  outside  watched  the  bull-fight 
through  a  hole  in  the  building,  and  cheered 
on  the  matador  with  shouts  and  laughter. 
At  length,  by  a  fortunate  stroke,  the  Afri 
can  conquered,  the  bull  fell,  and  his  slayer 


THE   WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  207 

threw  down  the  axe  and  rushed  forth  un 
hurt.  But  his  tormentors  declared  "  he  was 
no  longer  the  dim,  sombre  negro  he  went 
in,  but  literally  white  with  terror,  and  what 
was  once  his  wool  straightened  out  and 
standing  erect  on  his  head."  Without  wait 
ing  to  be  identified,  or  to  receive  pay  for 
his  work,  Brister,  affrighted  and  wrathful, 
withdrew  to  the  wooded  hill  and  to  the 
companionship  of  his  fortune-telling  Fenda, 
who  had  not  foreseen  the  hazard  of  her 
spouse. 

It  was  along  the  same  road  and  down 
this  hill,  passing  by  the  town  "  poor-farm  " 
and  poor-house,  —  the  last  retreat  of  these 
straggling  soldiers  of  fortune,  —  that  Tho- 
reau  went  toward  the  village  jail  from  his 
hermitage,  that  day  in  1846,  when  the  town 
constable  carried  him  off  from  the  shoe 
maker's  to  whose  shop  he  had  gone  to  get 
a  cobbled  shoe.  His  room-mate  in  jail  for 
the  single  night  he  slept  there,  was  intro 
duced  to  him  by  the  jailer,  Mr.  Staples  (a 
real  name),  as  "  a  first-rate  fellow  and  a 
clever  man,"  and  on  being  asked  by  Tho- 
reau  why  he  was  in  prison,  replied,  "  Why, 
they  accuse  me  of  burning  a  barn,  but  I 


208  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

never  did  it."  As  near  as  Thoreau  could 
make  out,  he  had  gone  to  bed  in  a  barn 
when  drunk,  and  smoked  his  pipe  there. 
Such  were  the  former  denizens  of  the  Wai- 
den  woods  —  votaries  of  Bacchus  and  Apol 
lo,  and  extremely  liable  to  take  fire  upon 
small  occasion,  —  like  Giordano  Bruno's 
sonneteer,  who,  addressing  the  Arabian 
Phenix,  says,  — 

"  Tu  bruci  'n  un,  ed  io  in  ogni  loco, 
lo  da  Cupido,  hai  tu  da  Febo  ilfoco" 

It  seems  by  the  letter  of  Margaret  Fuller 
in  1841  (cited  in  chapter  VI.),  that  Tho 
reau  had  for  years  meditated  a  withdrawal 
to  a  solitary  life.  The  retreat  he  then  had 
in  view  was,  doubtless,  the  Hollowell  Farm, 
a  place,  as  he  says,  "  of  complete  retire 
ment,  being  about  two  miles  from  the  vil 
lage,  half  a  mile  from  the  nearest  neighbor, 
and  separated  from  the  highway  by  a  broad 
field."  The  house  stood  apart  from  the 
road  to  Nine-Acre  Corner,  fronting  the 
Musketaquid  on  a  green  hill-side,  and  was 
first  seen  by  Thoreau  as  a  boy,  in  his  ear 
liest  voyages  up  the  river  to  Fairhaven 
Bay,  "concealed  behind  a  dense  grove  of 
red  maples,  through  which  I  heard  the 


THE   WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  209 

house-dog  bark."  This  place  Thoreau  once 
bought,  but  released  it  to  the  owner,  whose 
wife  refused  to  sign  the  deed  of  sale.  In 
his  Walden  venture  he  was  a  squatter,  using 
for  his  house-lot  a  woodland  of  Mr.  Emer 
son's,  who,  for  the  sake  of  his  walks  and  his 
wood-fire,  had  bought  land  on  both  sides  of 
Walden  Pond. 

How  early  Thoreau  formed  his  plan  of 
retiring  to  a  hut  among  these  woods,  I  have 
not  learned ;  but  in  a  letter  written  to  him 
March  5,  1845,  by  his  friend  Channing,  a 
passage  occurs  concerning  it ;  and  it  was  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  same  month  that  Tho 
reau  borrowed  Mr.  Alcott's  axe  and  went 
across  the  fields  to  cut  the  timber  for  his 
cabin.  Channing  writes :  — 

"  I  see  nothing  for  you  in  this  earth  but  that 
field  which  I  once  christened  *  Briars  ; '  go  out 
upon  that,  build  yourself  a  hut,  and  there  begin 
the  grand  process  of  devouring  yourself  alive.  I 
see  no  alternative,  no  other  hope  for  you.  Eat 
yourself  up ;  you  will  eat  nobody  else,  nor  any 
thing  else.  Concord  is  just  as  good  a  place  as 
any  other ;  there  are,  indeed,  more  people  in  the 
streets  of  that  village  than  in  the  streets  of  this." 
[He  was  writing  from  the  Tribune  Office,  in 

14 


210  HENRY  D.  THOREAff. 

New  York.]  "  This  is  a  singularly  muddy  town  ; 
muddy,  solitary,  and  silent.  I  saw  Teufelsdrockh 
a  few  days  since ;  he  said  a  few  words  to  me 
about  you.  Says  he,  '  That  fellow  Thoreau 
might  be  something,  if  he  would  only  take  a 
journey  through  the  Everlasting  No,  thence  for 
the  North  Pole.  By  G — ,'  said  the  old  clothes- 
bag,  warming  up,  *  I  should  like  to  take  that  fel 
low  out  into  the  Everlasting  No,  and  explode  him 
like  a  bombshell ;  he  would  make  a  loud  report ; 
it  would  be  fun  to  see  him  pick  himself  up. 
He  needs  the  Blumine  flower  business;  that 
would  be  his  salvation.  He  is  too  dry,  too  com 
posed,  too  chalky,  too  concrete.  Does  that  exe 
crable  compound  of  sawdust  and  stagnation  L. 
still  prose  about  nothing?  and  that  nutmeg- 
grater  of  a  Z.  yet  shriek  about  nothing  ?  Does 
anybody  still  think  of  coming  to  Concord  to  live  ? 
I  mean  new  people  ?  If  they  do,  let  them  be 
ware  of  you  philosophers.'  " 

Of  course,  this  imaginary  Teufelsdrockh, 
like  Carlyle's,  was  the  satirical  man  in  the 
writer  himself,  suggesting  the  humorous 
and  contradictory  side  of  things,  and  glan 
cing  at  the  coolness  of  Thoreau,  which  his 
friends  sometimes  found  provoking.  In  his 
own  person  Channing  adds :  — 

"  I  should  be  pleased  to  hear  from  Kamchatka 


THE  WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  211 

occasionally;  my  last  advices  from  the  Polar 
Bear  are  getting  stale.  In  addition  to  this  I  find 
that  my  corresponding  members  at  Van  Diemen's 
Land  have  wandered  into  limbo.  I  hear  occa 
sionally  from  the  World ;  everything  seems  to 
be  promising  in  that  quarter ;  business  is  flourish 
ing,  and  the  people  are  in  good  spirits.  I  feel 
convinced  that  the  Earth  has  less  claims  to  our 
regard  than  formerly ;  these  mild  winters  deserve 
severe  censure.  But  I  am  well  aware  that  the 
Earth  will  talk  about  the  necessity  of  routine, 
taxes,  etc.  On  the  whole  it  is  best  not  to  com 
plain  without  necessity." 

It  is  well  to  read  this  shrewd  humor, 
uttered  in  the  opposite  sense  from  Thoreau's 
paradoxical  wit  in  his  "  Walden,"  as  an  in 
troduction  or  motto  to  that  book.  For 
Thoreau  has  been  falsely  judged  from  the 
wit  and  the  paradox  of  "  Walden,"  as  if  he 
were  a  hater  of  men,  or  foolishly  desired  all 
mankind  to  retire  to  the  woods.  As  Chan- 
ning  said,  soon  after  his  friend's  death,  — 

"  The  fact  that  our  author  lived  for  a  while 
alone  in  a  shanty,  near  a  pond,  and  named  one 
of  his  books  after  the  place  where  it  stood,  has 
led  some  to  say  he  was  a  barbarian  or  a  misan 
thrope.  It  was  a  writing-case  ;  here  in  this 
wooden  inkstand  he  wrote  a  good  part  of  his 


212  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

famous  '  Walden,'  and  this  solitary  woodland 
pool  was  more  to  his  Muse  than  all  oceans  of  the 
placet,  by  the  force  of  imagination.  Some  have 
fancied,  because  he  moved  to  Walden,  he  left  his 
family.  He  bivouacked  there  and  really  lived 
at  home,  where  he  went  every  day." 

This  last  is  not  literally  true,  for  he  was 
sometimes  secluded  in  'his  hut  for  days  to 
gether  ;  but  he  remained  as  social  at  Wal 
den  as  he  had  been  while  an  inmate  of  Mr. 
Emerson's  family  in  1841-43,  or  again  in 
1847-48,  after  giving  up  his  hermitage.  He, 
in  fact,  as  he  says  himself,  — 

"  Went  to  the  woods  because  he  wished  to  live 
deliberately,  to  front  only  the  essential  facts  of 
life,  and  see  if  he  could  not  learn  what  it  had  to 
teach,  and  not,  when  he  came  to  die,  discover 
that  he  had  not  lived." 

In  another  place  he  says  he  went  to 
Walden  to  "  transact  some  private  busi 
ness,"  and  this  he  did  to  good  purpose.  He 
edited  there  his  "  Week,"  some  portions  of 
which  had  appeared  in  the  "  Dial  "  from 
1840  to  1844,  but  which  was  not  published 
as  a  volume  until  1849,  although  he  had 
made  many  attempts  to  issue  it  earlier.  It 
was  at  Walden,  also,  that  he  wrote  his  essay 


THE    WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  213 

on  Carlyle,  which  was  first  published  in 
"  Graham's  Magazine,"  at  Philadelphia,  in 
1847,  through  the  good  offices  of  Horace 
Greeley,  of  which  we  shall  hear  more  in  the 
next  chapter. 

Thoreau's  hermit  life  was  not,  then, 
merely  a  protest  against  the  luxury  and  the 
restraints  of  society,  nor  yet  an  austere 
discipline  such  as  monks  and  saints  have 
imposed  upon  themselves  for  their  souls' 
good.  "  My  purpose  in  going  to  Walden 
was  not  to  live  cheaply,  nor  to  live  dearly 
there,  but  to  transact  some  private  business 
with  the  fewest  obstacles."  He  lived  a 
life  of  labor  and  study  in  his  hut.  Emer 
son  says,  "  as  soon  as  he  had  exhausted  the 
advantages  of  that  solitude,  he  abandoned 
it."  He  had  edited  his  first  book  there ; 
had  satisfied  himself  that  he  was  fit  to  be 
an  author,  and  had  passed  his  first  exami 
nations  ;  then  he  graduated  from  that  gym 
nasium  as  another  young  student  might 
from  the  medical  college  or  the  polytechnic 
school.  "  I  left  the  woods  for  as  good  a 
reason  as  I  went  there."  His  abandoned 
hut  was  then  taken  by  a  Scotch  gardener, 
Hugh  Whelan  by  name,  who  removed  it 


214  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

some  rods  away,  to  the  midst  of  Thoreau's 
bean-field,  and  made  it  his  cottage  for  a  few 
years.  Then  it  was  bought  by  a  farmer, 
who  put  it  on  wheels  and  carried  it  three 
miles  northward,  toward  the  entry  of  the 
Estabrook  Farm  on  the  old  Carlisle  road, 
where  it  stood  till  after  Thoreau's  death,  — 
a  shelter  for  corn  and  beans,  and  a  favorite 
haunt  of  squirrels  and  blue  jays.  The 
wood-cut  representing  the  hermitage  in  the 
first  edition  of  "  Walden,"  is  from  a  sketch 
made  by  Sophia  Thoreau,  and  is  more  ex 
act  than  that  given  in  Page's  "  Life  of  Tho 
reau,"  but  in  neither  picture  are  the  trees 
accurately  drawn. 

On  the  spot  where  Thoreau  lived  at  Wal 
den  there  is  now  a  cairn  of  stones,  yearly 
visited  by  hundreds,  and  growing  in  height 
as  each  friend  of  his  muse  adds  a  stone  from 
the  shore  of  the  fair  water  he  loved  so 
well. 

"Beat  with  thy  paddle  on  the  boat 
Midway  the  lake,  —  the  wood  repeats 
The  ordered  blow ;  the  echoing  note 
Is  ended  in  thy  ear ;  yet  its  retreats 
Conceal  Time's  possibilities ; 
And  in  this  Man  the  nature  lies 
Of  woods  so  green, 
And  lakes  so  sheen, 
And  hermitages  edged  between. 


THE   WALDEN  HERMITAGE.  215 

"  And  I  may  tell  you  that  the  Man  was  good, 
Never  did  his  neighbor  harm,  — 
Sweet  was  it  where  he  stood, 
Sunny  and  warm; 
Like  the  seat  beneath  a  pine 
That  winter  suns  have  cleared  away 
With  their  yellow  tine,  — 
Red-cushioned  and  tasseled  with  the  day." 

The  events  and  thoughts  of  Thoreau's 
life  at  Walden  may  be  read  in  his  book  of 
that  name.  As  a  protest  against  society, 
that  life  was  ineffectual,  —  as  the  commu 
nities  at  Brook  Farm  and  Fruitlands  had 
proved  to  be ;  and  as  the  Fourierite  phalan 
steries,  in  which  Horace  Greeley  interested 
himself,  were  destined  to  be.  In  one.  sense, 
all  these  were  failures  ;  but  in  Thoreau's 
case  the  failure  was  slight,  the  discipline 
and  experience  gained  were  invaluable.  He 
never  regretted  it,  and  the  Walden  episode 
in  his  career  has  made  him  better  known 
than  anything  else. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

HOEACE  IN  THE  ROLE    OF    M^CENAS. 

IN  a  letter  to  his  sister  Sophia,  July  21, 
1843,  written  from  Mr.  William  Emerson's 
house  at  Staten  Island,  Thoreau  says :  — 

"  In  New  York  I  have  seen,  since  I  wrote  last, 
Horace  Greeley,  editor  of  the  '  Tribune,'  who  is 
cheerfully  in  earnest  at  his  office  of  all  work,  — 
a  hearty  New  Hampshire  boy  as  one  would  wish 
to  meet,  —  and  says,  *  Now  be  neighborly.'  He 
believes  only  or  mainly,  first  in  the  Sylvania  As 
sociation,  somewhere  in  Pennsylvania;  and  sec 
ondly,  and  most  of  all,  in  a  new  association,  to 
go  into  operation  soon  in  New  Jersey,  with  which 
he  is  connected." 

This  was  the  "  Phalanstery "  at  which 
W.  H.  Channing  afterward  preached.  A 
fortnight  later,  Thoreau  writes  to  Mr.  Em 
erson  :  — 

"  I  have  had  a  pleasant  talk  with  W.  H.  Chan* 
ning ;  and  Greeley,  too,  it  was  refreshing  to  meet. 
They  were  both  much  pleased  with  your  criti- 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    217 

cism  on  Carlyle,  but  thought  that  you  had  over 
looked  what  chiefly  concerned  them  in  the  book, 
—  its  practical  aims  and  merits." 

This  refers  to  the  notice  of  Carlyle's 
"  Past  and  Present,"  in  the  "  Dial  "  for 
July,  1843,  and  shows  that  Mr.  Greeley 
was  a  quick  reader  of  that  magazine,  as 
Thoreau  always  was  of  the  "New  York 
Tribune."  From  this  time  onward  a 
warm  friendship  continued  between  Tho 
reau  and  Greeley,  and  many  letters  went 
to  and  fro,  which  reveal  the  able  editor  in 
the  light  of  a  modern  Maecenas  to  the  au 
thor  of  the  Musketaquid  Georgics. 

No  letters  seem  to  have  passed  between 
them  earlier  than  1846;  and  in  1844-45 
Thoreau  must  have  known  the  "  Tribune  " 
editor  best  through  his  newspaper,  and 
from  the  letters  of  Margaret  Fuller,  Ellery 
Channing,  and  other  common  friends,  who 
saw  much  of  him  then,  admired  and  laughed 
at  him,  or  did  both  by  turns.  Miss  Fuller, 
who  had  gone  to  New  York  to  write  for  the 
"  Tribune,"  and  to  live  in  its  Editor's  family, 
wrote  :  — 

"  Mr.  Greeley  is  a  man  pf  genuine  excellence, 
honorable,  benevolent,  and  of  an  uncorrupted  dis- 


218  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

position.  He  is  sagacious,  and,  in  his  way,  of 
even  great  abilities.  In  modes  of  life  and  man 
ners,  he  is  a  man  of  the  people,  —  and  of  the 
American  people.  With  the  exception  of  my 
own  mother,  I  think  him  the  most  disinterestedly 
generous  person  I  have  ever  known." 

There  was  a  laughable  side  even  to  these 
fine  traits,  and  there  were  eccentricities  of 
dress  and  manner,  which  others  saw  more 
keenly  than  this  generous  woman.  Ellery 
Channing,  —  whose  eye  no  whimsical  or 
beautiful  object  ever  escaped,  —  in  the  letter 
of  March,  1845,  already  cited,  thus  signaled 
to  Thoreau  the  latest  news  of  his  friend  :  — 

"  Mumbo  Jumbo  is  recovering  from  an  attack 
of  sore  eyes,  and  will  soon  be  out,  in  a  pair  of 
canvas  trousers,  scarlet  jacket,  and  cocked  hat. 
I  understand  he  intends  to  demolish  all  the  re 
maining  species  of  Fetichism  at  a  meal.  I  think 
it  is  probable  it  will  vomit  him." 

Thoreau  wrote  an  essay  on  Carlyle  in 
1846,  and  in  the  summer  of  that  year  sent 
it  to  Mr.  Greeley,  with  a  request  that  he 
would  find  a  place  for  it  in  some  magazine. 
To  this  request,  which  Mr.  Greeley  himself 
had  invited,  no  doubt,  he  thus  replied :  — 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    219 

"August  16,  1846. 

"  MY  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  Believe  me  when  I 
say  that  I  mean  to  do  the  errand  you  have  asked 
of  me,  and  that  soon.  But  I  am  not  sanguine  of 
success,  and  have  hardly  a  hope  that  it  will  be 
immediate,  if  ever.  I  hardly  know  a  work  that 
would  publish  your  article*  all  at  once,  and  l  to  be 
continued '  are  words  shunned  like  a  pestilence. 
But  I  know  you  have  written  a  good  thing  about 
Carlyle,  —  too  solidly  good,  I  fear,  to  be  profit 
able  to  yourself,  or  attractive  to  publishers. 
Did'st  thou  ever,  O  my  friend !  ponder  on  the 
significance  and  cogency  of  the  assurance,  'Ye 
cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon,'  as  applicable  to 
literature,  —  applicable,  indeed,  to  all  things  what 
soever  ?  God  grant  us  grace  to  endeavor  to  serve 
Him  rather  than  Mammon,  —  that  ought  to  suf 
fice  us.  In  my  poor  judgment,  if  anything  is 
calculated  to  make  a  scoundrel  of  an  honest  man, 
writing  to  sell  is  that  very  particular  thing. 

"  Yours  heartily,  HORACE  GREELET. 

"  Remind  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and  wife  of 
my  existence  and  grateful  remembrance." 

On  the  30th  of  September  Mr.  Greeley 
again  wrote,  saying,  — 

"I  learned  to-day,  through  Mr.  Griswold, 
former  editor  of  '  Graham's  Magazine,'  that  your 
lecture  is  accepted,  to  appear  in  that  magazine. 


220  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

Of  course  it  is  to  be  paid  for  at  the  usual  rate,  as 
I  expressly  so  stated  when  I  inclosed  it  to  Gra 
ham.  He  has  not  written  me  a  word  on  the 
subject,  which  induces  me  to  think  he  may  have 
written  you.1  Please  write  me  if  you  would  have 
me  speak  further  on  the  subject.  The  pay,  how 
ever,  is  sure,  though  the  amount  may  not  be 
large,  and  I  think  you  may  wait  until  the  article 
appears,  before  making  further  stipulations  on 
the  subject." 

From  the  tenor  of  this  I  infer  that  Tho- 
reau  had  written  to  say  that  he  might  wish 
to  read  his  "  Thomas  Carlyle  "  as  a  lecture, 
and  desired  to  stipulate  for  that  before  it 
was  printed.  He  might  be  excused  for 
some  solicitude  concerning  payment,  from 
his  recent  experience  with  the  publishers  of 
the  "  Boston  Miscellany,"  which  had  printed, 
in  1843,  his  "  Walk  to  Wachusett."  At 
the  very  time  when  Thoreau,  in  New  York, 
was  making  Greeley's  acquaintance,  Mr. 
Emerson,  in  Boston,  was  dunning  the  Mis 
cellaneous  publishers,  and  wrote  to  Tho 
reau  (July  20, 1843)  :  — 

"  When  I  called  on ,  their  partner,  in  their 

absence,  informed  me  that  they  could  not  pay 
1  No  such  letter  appears. 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    221 

you,  at  present,  any  part  of  their  debt  on  account 
of  the  Boston  'Miscellany.'  After  much  talk 
ing  all  the  promise  he  could  offer  was,  "  that 
within  a  year  it  would  probably  be  paid,'  —  a 
probability  which  certainly  looks  very  slender. 
The  very  worst  thing  he  said  was  the  proposition 
that  you  should  take  your  payment  in  the  form 
of  Boston  Miscellanies !  I  shall  not  fail  to  re 
fresh  their  memory  at  intervals." 

But  I  cannot  learn  that  anything  came 
of  it.  Mr.  Greeley,  as  we  shall  see,  was  a 
more  successful  collector.  On  the  26th  of 
October,  1846,  he  continued  the  adventures 
of  the  wandering  essay  as  follows  :  — 

"  MY  FRIEND  THOREAU,  —  I  know  you  think 
it  odd  that  you  have  not  heard  further,  and,  per 
haps  blame  my  negligence  or  engrossing  cares, 
but,  if  so,  without  good  reason.  I  have  to-day 
received  a  letter  from  Griswold,  in  Philadelphia, 
who  says  :  '  The  article  by  Thoreau  on  Carlyle 
is  in  type,  and  will  be  paid  for  liberally.'  *  Lib 
erally  '  is  quoted  as  an  expression  of  Graham's. 
I  know  well  the  difference  between  a  publisher's 
and  an  author's  idea  of  what  is  '  liberally  ' ;  but 
I  give  you  the  best  I  can  get  as  the  result  of 
three  letters  to  Philadelphia  on  this  subject. 

"  Success  to  you,  my  friend !    Remind  Mr.  and 


222  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

Mrs.  Emerson  of  my  existence,  and  my  lively 
remembrance  of  their  various  kindnesses. 
"  Yours,  very  busy  in  our  political  contest, 
"  HORACE  GREELEY.* 

It  would  seem  that  "  Griswold  "  (who  was 
Rufus  W.  Griswold,  the  biographer  of 
Poe)  and  "  Graham "  (who  was  George 
R.  Graham,  the  magazine  publisher  of  Phil 
adelphia),  did  not  move  so  fast  either  in 
publication  or  in  payment  as  they  had  led 
Mr.  Greeley  to  expect ;  and  also  that  Tho- 
reau  became  impatient  and  wrote  to  his 
friend  that  he  would  withdraw  the  essay. 
Whereupon  Mr.  Greeley,  under  date  of  Feb 
ruary  5,  1847,  wrote  thus  :  — 

"  MY  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  Although  your  letter 
only  came  to  hand  to-day,  1  attended  to  its  sub 
ject  yesterday,  when  I  was  in  Philadelphia,  on 
my  way  home  from  Washington.  Your  article 
is  this  moment  in  type,  and  will  appear  about 
the  20th  inst.,  as  the  leading  article  in  '  Graham's 
Magazine '  for  next  month.  Now  don't  object 
to  this,  nor  be  unreasonably  sensitive  at  the  de 
lay.  It  is  immensely  more  important  to  you 
that  the  article  should  appear  thus  (that  is,  if  you 
have  any  literary  aspirations)  than  it  is  that  you 
should  make  a  few  dollars  by  issuing  it  in  some 


HORACE  IN  THE  RdLE  OF  MAECENAS.    223 

other  way.  As  to  lecturing,  you  have  been  at 
perfect  liberty  to  deliver  it  as  a  lecture  a  hun 
dred  times,  if  you  had  chosen, —  the  more  the 
better.  It  is  really  a  good  thing,  and  I  will  see 
that  Graham  pays  you  fairly  for  it.  But  its  ap 
pearance  there  is  worth  far  more  to  you  than 
money.  I  know  there  has  been  too  much  delay, 
and  have  done  my  best  to  obviate  it.  But  I 
could  not.  A  magazine  that  pays,  and  which  it 
is  desirable  to  be  known  as  a  contributor  to,  is 
always  crowded  with  articles,  and  has  to  postpone 
some  for  others  of  even  less  merit.  I  do  this 
myself  with  good  things  that  I  am  not  required 
to  pay  for. 

"  Thoreau,  do  not  think  hard  of  Graham.  Do 
not  try  to  stop  the  publication  of  your  article.  It 
is  best  as  it  is.  But  just  sit  down  and  write  a 
like  article  about  Emerson,  which  I  will  give 
you  $25  for,  if  you  cannot  do  better  with  it ; 
then  one  about  Hawthorne  at  your  leisure,  etc., 
etc.  I  will  pay  you  the  money  for  each  of  these 
articles  on  delivery,  publish  them  when  and 
how  I  please,  leaving  to  you  the  copyright  ex 
pressly.  In  a  year  or  two,  if  you  take  care  not 
to  write  faster  than  you  think,  you  will  have  the 
material  of  a  volume  worth  publishing,  —  and 
then  we  will  see  what  can  be  done.  There  is  a 
text  somewhere  in  St.  Paul  —  my  Scriptural 
reading  is  getting  rusty,  —  which  says,  'Look 


224  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

not  back  to  the  things  which  are  behind,  but 
rather  to  those  which  are  before,'  etc.  Com 
mending  this  to  your  thoughtful  appreciation,  I 
am,  yours,  etc.  HORACE  GREELEY." 

The  Carlyle  essay  did  appear  in  two 
numbers  of  "Graham's  Magazine"  (March 
and  April,  1847),  but  alas,  no  payment 
came  to  hand.  After  waiting  a  year  longer, 
Thoreau  wrote  to  Greeley  again  (March  31, 
1848),  informing  him  of  the  delinquency  of 
Griswold  and  Graham.  At  once,  his  friend 
replied  (April  3),  "  It  saddens  and  sur 
prises  me  to  know  that  your  article  was  not 
paid  for  by  Graham ;  and,  since  my  honor 
is  involved  in  the  matter,  I  will  see  that  you 
are  paid,  and  that  at  no  distant  day."  Ac 
cordingly  on  the  17th  of  May,  1848,  he 
writes  again  as  follows  :  — 

"  DEAR  FRIEND  THOREAU,  —  I  trust  you 
have  not  thought  me  neglectful  or  dilatory  with 
regard  to  your  business.  I  have  done  my  very 
best,  throughout,  and  it  is  only  to-day  that  I  have 
been  able  to  lay  my  hand  on  the  money  due  you 
from  Graham.  I  have  been  to  see  him  in  Phila 
delphia,  but  did  not  catch  him  in  his  business 
office ;  then  I  have  been  here  to  meet  him,  and 
been  referred  to  his  brother,  etc.  I  finally  found 


HORACE  IN  TEE  RdLE  OF  MAECENAS.    225 

the  two  numbers  of  the  work  in  which  your  arti 
cle  was  published  (not  easy,  I  assure  you,  for  he 
has  them  not,  nor  his  brother,  and  I  hunted  them 
up,  and  bought  one  of  them  at  a  very  out-of-the- 
way  place),  and  with  these  I  made  out  a  regular 
bill  for  the  contribution  ;  drew  a  draft  on  G.  R. 
Graham  for  the  amount,  gave  it  to  his  brother 
here  for  collection,  and  to-day  received  the  money. 
Now  you  see  how  to  get  pay  yourself,  another 
time;  I  have  pioneered  the  way,  and  you  can 
follow  it  easily  yourself.  There  has  been  no 
intentional  injustice  on  Graham's  part ;  but  he  is 
overwhelmed  with  business,  has  too  many  irons 
in  the  fire,  and  we  did  not  go  at  him  the  right 
way.  Had  you  drawn  a  draft  on  him,  at  first, 
and  given  it  to  the  Concord  Bank  to  send  in  for 
collection,  you  would  have  received  your  money 
long  since.  Enough  of  this.  I  have  made  Gra 
ham  pay  you  $75,  but  I  only  send  you  $50,  for, 
having  got  so  much  for  Carlyle,  I  am  ashamed  to 
take  your  <  Maine  Woods  '  for  $25." 

This  last  allusion  is  to  a  new  phase  of 
the  queer  patronage  which  the  good  Msece- 
nas  extended  to  our  Concord  poet.  In  his 
letter  of  March  31,  1848,  Thoreau  had  of 
fered  Greeley,  in  compliance  with  his  sug 
gestion  of  the  previous  year,  a  paper  on 
"Ktaadn  and  the  Maine  Woods,"  which 

15 


226  HENRY  D.   THOREAV. 

afterwards  appeared  in  the  "  Union  Mag 
azine."  On  the  17th  of  April  Greeley 
writes :  — 

"  I  inclose  you  $25  for  your  article  on  Maine 
Scenery,  as  promised.  I  know  it  is  worth  more, 
though  I  have  not  yet  found  time  to  read  it ;  but 
I  have  tried  once  to  sell  it  without  success.  It 
is  rather  long  for  my  columns,  and  too  fine  for 
the  million ;  but  I  consider  it  a  cheap  bargain, 
and  shall  print  it  myself,  if  I  do  not  dispose  of 
it  to  better  advantage.  You  will  not,  of  course, 
consider  yourself  under  any  sort  of  obligation  to 
me,  for  my  offer  was  in  the  way  of  business, 
and  I  have  got  more  than  the  worth  of  my 
money." 

On  the  17th  of  May  he  adds :  — 

"  I  have  expectations  of  procuring  it  a  place 
in  a  new  magazine  of  high  character  that  will 
pay.  I  don't  expect  to  get  as  much  for  it  as 
for  Carlyle,  but  I  hope  to  get  $50.  If  you  are 
satisfied  to  take  the  $25  for  your  *  Maine 
Woods,'  say  so,  and  I  will  send  on  the  money  ; 
but  I  don't  want  to  seem  a  Jew,  buying  your 
articles  at  half  price  to  speculate  upon.  If  you 
choose  to  let  it  go  that  way,  it  shall  be  so  ;  but 
I  would  sooner  do  my  best  for  you,  and  send  you 
the  money." 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    227 

On  the  28th  of  October,  1848,  he  writes : 
"  I  break  a  silence  of  some  duration  to  inform 
you  that  I  hope  on  Monday  to  receive  payment 
for  your  glorious  account  of  i  Ktaadn  and  the 
Maine  Woods,'  which  I  bought  of  you  at  a 
Jew's  bargain,  and  sold  to  the  '  Union  Maga 
zine.'  I  am  to  get  $75  for  it,  and,  as  I  don't 
choose  to  exploiter  you  at  such  a  rate,  I  shall 
insist  on  inclosing  you  $25  more  in  this  letter, 
which  will  still  leave  me  $25  to  pay  various 
charges  and  labors  I  have  incurred  in  selling 
your  articles  and  getting  paid  for  them,  —  the 
latter  by  far  the  more  difficult  portion  of  the 
business." 

In  the  letter  of  April  17,  1848,  Mr. 
Greeley  had  further  said :  — 

"  If  you  will  write  me  two  or  three  articles  in 
the  course  of  the  summer,  I  think  I  can  dispose 
of  them  for  your  benefit.  But  write  not  more 
than  half  as  long  as  your  article  just  sent  me, 
for  that  is  too  long  for  the  magazines.  If  that 
were  in  two,  it  would  be  far  more  valuable. 
What  about  your  book  (the  *  Week ')  ?  Is  any 
thing  going  on  about  it  now?  Why  did  not 
Emerson  try  it  in  England  ?  I  think  the  How- 
itts  could  get  it  favorably  before  the  British 
public.  If  you  can  suggest  any  way  wherein  I 
can  put  it  forward,  do  not  hesitate,  but  command 


228  EENRT  D.   THOREAU. 

In  the  letter  of  May  17th,  he  reiterates 
the  advice  to  be  brief  :  — 

"  Thoreau,  if  you  will  only  write  one  or  two 
articles,  when  in  the  spirit,  about  half  the  length 
of  this,  I  can  sell  it  readily  and  advantageously. 
The  length  of  your  papers  is  the  only  imped 
iment  to  their  appreciation  by  the  magazines. 
Give  me  one  or  two  shorter,  and  I  will  try  to  coin 
them  speedily." 

May  25th  he  returns  to  the  charge,  when 
sending  the  last  twenty-five  dollars  for  the 
"  Maine  Woods  "  :  — 

"  Write  me  something  shorter  when  the  spirit 
moves  (never  write  a  line  otherwise,  for  the  hack 
writer  is  a  slavish  beast,  /know),  and  I  will  sell 
it  for  you  soon.  I  want  one  shorter  article  from 
your  pen  that  will  be  quoted,  as  these  long  arti 
cles  cannot  be,  and  let  the  public  know  something 
of  your  way  of  thinking  and  seeing.  It  will  do 
good.  What  do  you  think  of  following  out  your 
thought  in  an  essay  on  '  The  Literary  Life  ? ' 
You  need  not  make  a  personal  allusion,  but  I 
know  you  can  write  an  article  worth  reading  on 
that  theme,  when  you  are  in  the  vein." 

After  a  six  months'  interval  (November 
19,  1848),  Greeley  resumes  in  a  similar 
strain :  — 


HORACE   IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    229 

"  FRIEND  THOREAU,  —  Yours  of  the  17th  re 
ceived.  Say  we  are  even  on  money  counts,  and 
let  the  matter  drop.  I  have  tried  to  serve  you, 
and  have  been  fully  paid  for  my  own  disburse 
ments  and  trouble  in  the  premises.  So  we  will 
move  on. 

"  I  think  you  will  do  well  to  send  me  some 
passages  from  one  or  both  of  your  new  works  to 
dispose  of  to  the  magazines.  This  will  be  the 
best  kind  of  advertisement,  whether  for  a  pub 
lisher  or  for  readers.  You  may  write  with  an 
angel's  pen,  yet  your  writings  have  no  mercan 
tile  money  value  till  you  are  known  and  talked 
of  as  an  author.  Mr.  Emerson  would  have  been 
twice  as  much  known  and  read,  if  he  had  written 
for  the  magazines  a  little,  just  to  let  common 
people  know  of  his  existnce.  I  believe  a  chapter 
from  one  of  your  books  printed  in  '  Graham,'  or 
6  The  Union/  will  add  many  to  the  readers  of  the 
volume  when  issued.  Here  is  the  reason  why 
British  books  sell  so  much  better  among  us  than 
American,  —  because  they  are  thoroughly  adver 
tised  through  the  British  reviews,  magazines,  and 
journals  which  circulate  or  are  copied  among  us. 
However,  do  as  you  please.  If  you  choose  to 
send  me  one  of  your  manuscripts  I  will  get  it 
published,  but  I  cannot  promise  you  any  con 
siderable  recompense ;  and,  indeed,  if  Munroe 
will  do  it,  that  will  be  better.  Your  writings  are 


230  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

in  advance  of  the  general  mind  here ;  Boston  is 
nearer  their  standard.  I  never  saw  the  verses 
you  speak  of.  Wont  you  send  them  again  ?  I 
have  been  buried  up  in  politics  for  the  last  six 
weeks.  Kind  regards  to  Emerson.  It  is  doubt 
ful  about  my  seeing  you  this  season." 

Here  the  letters  ceased  for  a  time.  "  Mun- 
roe  did  it,"  —  that  is,  a  Boston  bookseller 
published  Thoreau's  "  Week,"  which  was 
favorably  reviewed  by  George  Ripley  in 
the  "  Tribune,"  by  Lowell  in  the  "  Massa 
chusetts  Quarterly,"  and  by  others  else 
where  ;  but  the  book  did  not  sell,  and  in 
volved  its  author  in  debt  for  its  printing. 
To  meet  this  he  took  up  surveying  as  a  bus 
iness,  and  after  a  time,  when  some  payment 
must  be  made,  he  asked  his  friend  Greeley 
for  a  loan.  In  the  interval,  Margaret  Ful 
ler  had  written  from  Europe  those  remark 
able  letters  for  the  "Tribune,"  had  married 
in  Italy,  sailed  for  home  in  1850,  and  died 
on  the  shore  of  Fire  Island,  near  New  York, 
whither  Thoreau  went  with  her  friends  to 
learn  her  fate,  and  recover  the  loved  re 
mains.  This  was  in  July,  1850,  and  he  no 
doubt  saw  Mr.  Greeley  there.  A  year  and 
a  half  later,  when  he  was  seeking  oppor- 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    231 

tunities  to  lecture,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Greeley 
again,  in  February,  1852,  offering  himself 
to  lecture  in  a  course  at  New  York,  which 
the  "Tribune"  editor  had  some  interest  in. 
The  reply  was  this  :  — 

"  NEW  YORK,  February  24,  1852. 
"Mr  FRIEND  THOREAU,  —  Thank  you  for 
your  remembrance,  though  the  motto  you  sug 
gest  is  impracticable.  The  People's  Course  is 
full  for  the  season  ;  and  even  if  it  were  not,  your 
name  would  probably  not  pass  ;  because  it  is  not 
merely  necessary  that  each  lecturer  should  con 
tinue  well  the  course,  but  that  he  shall  be  known 
as  the  very  man  beforehand.  Whatever  draws 
less  than  fifteen  hundred  hearers  damages  the 
finances  of  the  movement,  so  low  is  the  admis 
sion,  and  eo  large  the  expense.  But,  Thoreau, 
you  are  a  better  speaker  than  many,  but  a  far 
better  writer  still.  Do  you  wish  to  swap  any  of 
your  *  wood-notes  wild '  for  dollars  ?  If  yea,  and 
you  will  sell  me  some  articles,  shorter,  if  you 
please,  than  the  former,  I  will  try  to  coin  them 
for  you.  Is  it  a  bargain  ?  Yours, 

"  HORACE  GREELEY." 

Thoreau  responded  at  once  with  some 
manuscripts  (March  5),  and  was  thus  ad 
dressed,  March  18,  by  his  friend :  — 


232  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

"  I  shall  get  you  some  money  for  the  articles 
you  sent  me,  though  not  immediately.  As  to 
your  long  account  of  a  Canadian  tour,  I  don't 
know.  It  looks  unmanageable.  Can't  you  cut 
it  into  three  or  four,  and  omit  all  that  relates  to 
time  ?  The  cities  are  described  to  death  ;  but  I 
know  you  are  at  home  with  Nature,  and  that  she 
rarely  and  slowly  changes.  Break  this  up,  if 
you  can,  and  I  will  try  to  have  it  swallowed 
and  digested." 

A  week  later  he  sent  a  letter  from  the 
publisher,  Sartain,  accepting  the  articles  for 
a  low  price,1  and  adds  :  "  If  you  break  up 

1  That  is  to  say,  a  low  price  compared  with  what  is 
now  paid.  As  the  letter  courteously  states  some  matters 
that  have  now  become  curious,  it  may  be  given :  — 

"  PHILADELPHIA,  March  24, 1852. 
"DEAR  SIR, — I  have  read  the  articles  of  Mr.  Tho- 
reau  forwarded  by  you,  and  will  be  glad  to  publish  them 
if  our  terms  are  satisfactory.  We  generally  pay  for 
prose  composition  per  printed  page,  and  would  allow 
him  three  dollars  per  page.  We  do  not  pay  more  than 
four  dollars  for  any  that  we  now  engage.  I  did  not 
suppose  our  maximum  rate  would  have  paid  you  (Mr. 
Greeley)  for  your  lecture,  and  therefore  requested  to 
know  your  own  terms.  Of  course,  when  an  article  is 
unusually  desirable,  we  may  deviate  from  rule ;  I  now 
only  mention  ordinary  arrangement.  I  was  very  sorry 
not  to  have  your  article,  but  shall  enjoy  the  reading  of  it 
in  Graham.  Mr.  T.  might  send  us  some  further  contri- 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    233 

your  '  Excursion  to  Canada '  into  three  or 
four  articles,  I  have  no  doubt  I  could  get  it 
published  on  similar  terms."  April  3, 1852, 
he  returns  to  a  former  proposition,  that  Tho- 
reau  shall  write  about  Emerson  as  he  did 
six  years  before  on  Carlyle. 

"  FRIEND  THOREAU,  —  I  wish  you  to  write  me 
an  article  on  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  his  Works 
and  Ways,  extending  to  one  hundred  pages, 
or  so,  of  letter  sheet  like  this,  to  take  the  form 
of  a  review  of  his  writings,  but  to  give  some  idea 
of  the  Poet,  the  Genius,  the  Man,  —  with  some 
idea  of  the  New  England  scenery  and  home  in 
fluence,  which  have  combined  to  make  him  what 
he  is.  Let  it  be  calm,  searching,  and  impartial ; 
nothing  like  adulation,  but  a  just  summing  up  of 
what  he  is  and  what  he  has  done.  I  mean  to  get 
this  into  the  '  Westminster  Review,'  but  if  not 
acceptable  there,  I  will  publish  it  elsewhere.  I 
will  pay  you  fifty  dollars  for  the  article  when  de 
livered  ;  in  advance,  if  you  desire  it.  Say  the 
word,  and  I  will  send  the  money  at  once.  It  is 
perfectly  convenient  to  do  so.  Your  '  Carlyle  ' 
article  is  my  model,  but  you  can  give  us  Emerson 

butions,  and  shall  at  least  receive  prompt  and  courteous 
decision  respecting  them.  Yours  truly, 

"JOHN  SARTAIN." 

It  seems  sad  so  candid  and  amiable  a  publisher  should 
not  have  succeeded. 


234  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

better  than  you  did  Carlyle.  I  presume  he  would 
allow  you  to  write  extracts  for  this  purpose  from 
his  lectures  not  yet  published.  I  would  delay  the 
publication  of  the  article  to  suit  his  publishing 
arrangements,  should  that  be  requested. 

"Yours,  HORACE  GREELEY." 

To  this  request,  as  before,  there  came  a 
prompt  negative,  although  Thoreau  was 
then  sadly  in  need  of  money.  Mr.  Greeley 
wrote,  April  20  :  — 

"  I  am,  rather  sorry  you  will  not  do  the 
*  Works  and  Ways,'  but  glad  that  you  are  able 
to  employ  your  time  to  better  purpose.  But 
your  Quebec  notes  have  n't  reached  me  yet,  and 
I  fear  the  '  good  time  '  is  passing.  They  ought 
to  have  appeared  in  the  June  number  of  the 
monthlies,  but  now  cannot  before  July.  If  you 
choose  to  send  them  to  me  all  in  a  lump,  I  will  try 
to  get  them  printed  in  that  way.  I  don't  care 
about  them  if  you  choose  to  reserve,  or  to  print 
them  elsewhere  ;  but  I  can  better  make  a  use  for 
them  at  this  season  that  at  any  other." 

They  were  sent,  and  offered  to  the 
"  Whig  Review,"  and  to  other  magazines  ,• 
but  on  the  25th  of  June,  Mr.  Greeley 
writes :  — 

"  I  have  had  only  bad  luck  with  your  manu« 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    235 

script.  Two  magazines  have  refused  it  on  the 
ground  of  its  length,  saying  that  articles  '  To  be 
continued '  are  always  unpopular,  however  good. 
I  will  try  again." 

It  seems  that  the  author  had  relied  upon 
money  from  this  source,  and  a  week  or  two 
later  he  asks  his  friend  to  lend  him  the  ex 
pected  seventy-five  dollars,  offering  security, 
with  mercantile  scrupulosity.  Promptly 
came  this  answer  :  — 

"NEW  YORK,  July  8,  1852. 
"  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  Yours  received.  I  was 
absent  yesterday.  I  can  lend  you  the  seventy- 
five  dollars,  and  am  very  glad  to  do  it.  Don't 
talk  about  security.  I  am  sorry  about  your  MSS., 
which  I  do  not  quite  despair  of  using  to  your  ad 
vantage.  Yours,  HORACE  GREELEY." 

The  "  Yankee  in  Canada,"  as  it  is  now 
called  (the  record  of  Thoreau's  journey 
through  French  Canada  in  September, 
1850,  with  Ellery  Channing),  was  offered 
to  u  Putnam's  Magazine  "  by  Mr.  Greeley> 
and  begun  there,  but  ill-luck  attended  it. 
Before  it  went  the  paper  on  "  Cape  Cod," 
which  became  the  subject  of  controversy, 
first  as  to  price,  and  then  as  to  its  tone  to 
wards  the  people  of  that  region.  This  will 


236  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

explain  the  letters  of  Mr.  Greeley  that  fol 
low  :  — 

"  NEW  YORK,  November  23,  1852. 
"  MY  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  I  have  made  no 
bargain  —  none  whatever  —  with  Putnam  con 
cerning  your  MSS.  I  have  indicated  no  price 
to  them.  I  handed  over  the  MS.  because  I 
wished  it  published,  and  presumed  that  was  in 
accordance  both  with  your  interest  and  your 
wishes.  And  I  now  say  to  you,  that  if  he  will 
pay  you  three  dollars  per  printed  page,  I  think 
that  will  be  very  well.  I  have  promised  to  write 
something  for  him  myself,  and  shall  be  well  satis 
fied  with  that  price.  Your  «  Canada '  is  not  so 
fresh  and  acceptable  as  if  it  had  just  been  written 
on  the  strength  of  a  last  summer's  trip,  and  I  hope 
you  will  have  it  printed  in  «  Putnam's  Monthly/ 
But  I  have  said  nothing  to  his  folks  as  to  price, 
and  will  not  till  I  hear  from  you  again.  Very 
probably  there  was  some  misapprehension  on 
the  part  of  C.  I  presume  the  price  now  offered 
you  is  that  paid  to  writers  generally  for  the 
<  Monthly/  As  to  Sartain,  I  know  his  '  (Union) 
Magazine '  has  broken  down,  but  I  guess  he  will 
pay  you.  I  have  seen  but  one  of  your  articles 
printed  by  him,  and  I  think  the  other  may  be  re* 
claimed.  Please  address  him  at  once." 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    237 


YORK,  January  2,  1853. 

"  FRIEND  THOREAU,  —  I  have  yours  of  the 
29th,  and  credit  you  $20.  Pay  me  when  and  in 
such  sums  as  may  be  convenient.  I  am  sorry 
you  and  C.  cannot  agree  so  as  to  have  your 
whole  MS.  printed.  It  will  be  worth  nothing 
elsewhere  after  having  partly  appeared  in  Put 
nam's.  I  think  it  is  a  mistake  to  conceal  the  au 
thorship  of  the  several  articles,  making  them  all 
(so  to  speak)  editorial;  but  if  that  is  done,  don't 
you  see  that  the  elimination  of  very  flagrant  her 
esies  (like  your  defiant  Pantheism)  becomes  a 
necessity  ?  If  you  had  withdrawn  your  MSS.,  on 
account  of  the  abominable  misprints  in  the  first 
number,  your  ground  would  have  been  far  more 
tenable. 

"  However,  do  what  you  will.     Yours, 

"HORACE  GREELEY." 

Thoreau  did  what  he  would,  of  course,  and 
the  article  in  Putnam  came  to  an  abrupt 
end.  The  loan  made  in  July,  1852,  was 
paid  with  interest  on  the  9th  of  March, 
1853,  as  the  following  note  shows  :  — 

"NEW  YORK,  March  16,  1853. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  yours  of  the  9th,  inclos 

ing  Putnam's  check  for  $59,  making  $79  ie  all 

you  have  paid  me.     I  am  paid  in  full,  and  this 

letter  is  your  receipt  in  full.     I  don't  want  any 


238  EENEY  D.  THOREAU. 

pay  for  my  '  services,'  whatever  they  may  have 
been.  Consider  me  your  friend  who  wished  to 
serve  you,  however  unsuccessfully.  Don't  break 
with  C.  or  Putnam." 

A  year  later,  Thoreau  renewed  his  sub 
scription  to  the  "  Weekly  Tribune,"  but 
the  letter  miscarried.  In  due  time  came 
this  reply  to  a  third  letter :  — 

"March  6,  1854. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  presume  your  first  letter  con 
taining  the  $2  was  robbed  by  our  general  mail 
robber  of  New  Haven,  who  has  just  been  sent  to 
the  State's  Prison.  Your  second  letter  has  prob 
ably  failed  to  receive  attention  owing  to  a  press 
of  business.  But  I  will  make  all  right.  You 
ought  to  have  the  Semi-weekly,  and  I  shall  order 
it  sent  to  you  one  year  on  trial ;  if  you  choose 
to  write  me  a  letter  or  so  some  time,  very  well ; 
if  not,  we  will  be  even  without  that. 

"Thoreau,  I  want  you  to  do  something  on  my 
urgency.  I  want  you  to  collect  and  arrange  your 
•  Miscellanies  '  and  send  them  to  me.  Put  in 
«  Ktaadn,'  <  Carlyle,' '  A  Winter  Walk,'  «  Canada/ 
etc.,  and  I  will  try  to  find  a  publisher  who  will 
bring  them  out  at  his  own  risk,  and  (I  hope)  to 
your  ultimate  profit.  If  you  have  anything  new 
to  put  with  them,  very  well ;  but  let  me  have 
about  a  12mo  volume  whenever  you  can  get  it 


HORACE  IN  THE  RdLE  OF  MAECENAS.    239 

ready,  and  see  if  there  is  not  something  to  your 
credit  in  the  bank  of  Fortune.     Yours, 

"  HORACE  GREELEY." 

In  reply,  Thoreau  notified  his  friend  of 
the  early  publication  of  "  Walden,"  and  was 
thus  met :  — 

"March  23 ,1854. 

"  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  I  am  glad  your  *  Wal 
den  '  is  coming  out.  /shall  announce  it  at  once, 
whether  Ticknor  does  or  not.  I  am  in  no  hurry 
now  about  your  '  Miscellanies ; '  take  your  time, 
select  your  title,  and  prepare  your  articles  delib 
erately  and  finally.  Then,  if  Ticknor  will  give 
you  something  worth  having,  let  him  have  this- 
too  ;  if  proffering  it  to  him  is  to  glut  your  mar 
ket,  let  it  come  to  me.  But  take  your  time.  I 
was  only  thinking  you  were  merely  waiting  when 
you  might  be  doing  something.  I  referred  (with 
out  naming  you)  to  your  *  Walden  '  experience 
in  my  lecture  on  <  Self-Culture,'  with  which  I 
have  had  ever  so  many  audiences.  This  episode 
excited  much  interest,  and  I  have  been  repeat 
edly  asked  who  it  is  that  I  refer  to. 

"  Yours,  HORACE  GREELEY. 

"P.  S.  —  You  must  know  Miss  Elizabeth 
Hoar,  whereas  I  hardly  do.  Now,  I  have  offered 
to  edit  Margaret's  works,  and  I  want  of  Eliza 
beth  a  letter  or  memorandum  of  personal  recol- 


240  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

lections  of  Margaret  and  her  ideas.     Can't  you 
ask  her  to  write  it  for  me  ?  H.  G." 

To  the  request  of  this  postscript  Thoreau 
attended  at  once,  but  the  "  Miscellanies " 
dwelt  not  in  his  mind,  it  would  seem.  He 
had  now  become  deeply  concerned  about 
slavery,  was  also  pursuing  his  studies  con 
cerning  the  Indians,  and  had  little  time  for 
the  collection  of  his  published  papers.  A 
short  note  of  April  2,  1854,  closes  this  part 
of  the  Greeley  correspondence,  thus  :  — 

"  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  Thank  you  for  your 
kindness  in  the  matter  of  Margaret.  Pray  take 
no  further  trouble  ;  but  if  anything  should  come 
in  your  way,  calculated  to  help  me,  do  not  for 
get.  Yours,  HORACE  GREELEY." 

In  August,  1855,  Mr.  Greeley  wrote  to 
suggest  that  copies  of  "  Walden  "  should  be 
sent  to  the  "  Westminster  Review,"  to  "  The 
Reasoner,"  147  Fleet  Street,  London,  to 
Gerald  Massey,  office  of  the  "  News,"  Edin 
burgh,  and  to  " Wills,  Esq.,  Dickens's 

Household  Words,"  adding  :  — 

"  There  is  a  small  class  in  England  who  ought 
to  know  what  you  have  written,  and  I  feel  sure 
your  publishers  would  not  throw  away  copies 


HORACE  IN  THE  ROLE  OF  MAECENAS.    241 

gent  to  these  periodicals  ;  especially  if  your 
<  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac '  could 
accompany  them.  Chapman,  editor  of  the  '  West 
minster,'  expressed  surprise  that  your  book  had 
not  been  sent  him,  and  I  could  find  very  few  who 
had  read  or  seen  it.  If  a  new  edition  should  be 
called  for,  try  to  have  it  better  known  in  Europe, 
but  have  a  few  copies  sent  to  those  worthy  of  it, 
at  all  events." 

In  March,  1856,  Mr.  Greeley  opened  a 
new  correspondence  with  Thoreau,  asking 
him  to  become  the  tutor  of  his  children,  and 
to  live  with  him,  or  near  him,  at  Chappa- 
qua.  The  proposition  was  made  in  the 
most  generous  manner,  and  was  for  a  time 
considered  by  Thoreau,  who  felt  a  sense  of 
obligation  as  well  as  a  sincere  friendship  to 
wards  the  man  who  had  believed  in  him 
and  served  him  so  seasonably  in  the  years 
of  his  obscurity.  But  it  resulted  in  noth 
ing  further  than  a  brief  visit  to  Mr.  Greeley 
in  the  following  autumn,  during  which,  as 
Thoreau  used  to  say,  Mr.  Alcott  and  Mr. 
Greeley  went  to  the  opera  together. 

16 


CHAPTER  X. 

IN  WOOD    AND  FIELD. 

EXCEPT  the  Indians  themselves,  whose 
wood-craft  he  never  tires  of  celebrating,  few 
Americans  were  ever  more  at  home  in  the 
open  air  than  Thoreau  ;  not  even  his  friend 
John  Brown,  who,  like  himself,  suggested 
the  Indian  by  the  delicacy  of  his  percep 
tions  and  his  familiarity  with  all  that  goes 
forward,  or  stands  still,  in  wood  and  field. 
Thoreau  could  find  his  path  in  the  woods 
at  night,  he  said,  better  by  his  feet  than 
his  eyes. 

"  He  was  a  good  swimmer,"  says  Emerson,  "  a 
good  runner,  skater,  boatman,  and  would  out 
walk  most  countrymen  in  a  day's  journey.  And 
the  .relation  of  body  to  mind  was  still  finer.  The 
length  of  his  walk  uniformly  made  the  length  of 
his  writing.  If  shut  up  in  the  house,  he  did  not 
write  at  all." 

In  his  last  illness  says  Channing,  — 

"His  habit  of   engrossing  his  thoughts  in  a 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  243 

journal,  which  had  lasted  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen 
tury,  —  his  out-door  life,  of  which  he  used  to  say, 
if  he  omitted  that,  all  his  living  ceased,  —  this 
now  became  so  incontrovertibly  a  thing  of  the 
past  that  he  said  once,  standing  at  the  window, 
*  I  cannot  see  on  the  outside  at  all.  We  thought 
ourselves  great  philosophers  in  those  wet  days 
when  we  used  to  go  out  and  sit  down  by  the 
wall-sides.'  This  was  absolutely  all  he  was  ever 
heard ( to  say  of  that  outward  world  during  his 
illness,  neither  could  a  stranger  in  the  least  infer 
that  he  had  ever  a  friend  in  field  or  wood." 

This  out-door  life  began  as  early  as  he 
could  recollect,  and  his  special  attraction  to 
rivers,  woods,  and  lakes  was  a  thing  of  his 
boyhood.  He  had  begun  to  collect  Indian 
relics  before  leaving  college,  and  was  a 
diligent  student  of  natural  history  there. 
Whether  he  was  naturally  an  observer  or  > 
not  (which  has  been  denied  in  a  kind  of 
malicious  paradox),  let  his  life-work  attest. 
Early  in  1847  he  made  some  collections  of 
fishes,  turtles,  etc.,  in  Concord  for  Agassiz, 
then  newly  arrived  in  America,  and  I  have 
(in  a  letter  of  May  3,  1847)  this  account  of 
their  reception  :  — 

"  I  carried  them  immediately  to  Mr.  Agassiz, 


244  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

who  was  highly  delighted  with  them.  Some  of 
the  species  he  had  seen  before,  but  never  in  so 
fresh  condition.  Others,  as  the  breams  and  the 
pout,  he  had  seen  only  in  spirits,  and  the  little 
turtle  he  knew  only  from  the  books.  I  am  sure 
you  would  have  felt  fully  repaid  for  your  trouble, 
if  you  could  have  seen  the  eager  satisfaction  with 
which  he  surveyed  each  fin  and  scale.  He  said 
the  small  mud-turtle  was  really  a  very  rare  spe 
cies,  quite  distinct  from  the  snapping-turtle.  The 
breams  and  pout  seemed  to  please  the  Professor 
very  much.  He  would  gladly  come  up  to  Con 
cord  to  make  a  spearing  excursion,  as  you  sug 
gested,  but  is  drawn  off  by  numerous  and  press 
ing  engagements." 

On  the  27th  of  May,  Thoreau's  corre 
spondent  says : — 

"  Mr.  Agassiz  was  very  much  surprised  and 
pleased  at  the  extent  of  the  collections  you  sent 
during  his  absence ;  the  little  fox  he  has  es 
tablished  in  comfortable  quarters  in  his  back 
yard,  where  he  is  doing  well.  Among  the  fishes 
you  sent  there  is  one,  probably  two,  new  spe 
cies." 

June  1st,  in  other  collections,  other  new 
species  were  discovered,  much  to  Agassiz's 
delight,  who  never  failed  afterward  to  cul- 


IN   WOOD  AND  FIELD.  245 

fcivate  Thoreau's  society  when  he  could. 
But  the  poet  avoided  the  man  of  science, 
having  no  love  for  dissection  ;  though  he 
recognized  in  Agassiz  the  qualities  that 
gave  him  so  much  distinction. 

The  paper  on  "  Ktaadn  and  the  Maine 
Woods,"  which  Horace  Greeley  bought  "  at 
a  Jew's  bargain,"  and  sold  to  a  publisher 
'for  seventy-five  dollars,  was  the  journal  of 
a  visit  made  to  the  highest  mountain  of 
Maine  during  Thoreau's  second  summer  at 
Walden.  An  aunt  of  his  had  married  in 
Bangor,  Maine,  and  her  daughters  had  again 
married  there,  so  that  the  young  forester 
of  Concord  had  kinsmen  on  the  Penobscot, 
engaged  in  converting  the  Maine  forests 
into  pine  lumber.  At  the  end  of  August, 
in  1846,  while  his  Carlyle  manuscript  was 
passing  from  Greeley  to  Griswold,  from 
Griswold  to  Graham,  and  from  Graham  to 
the  Philadelphia  type-setters,  Thoreau  him 
self  was  on  his  way  from  Boston  to  Bangor; 
and  on  the  first  day  of  September  he  started 
with  his  cousin  from  Bangor,  to  explore  the 
upper  waters  of  the  Penobscot  and  climb 
the  summit  of  Ktaadn.  The  forest  region 
about  this  mountain  had  been  explored 


246  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

in  1837  by  Dr.  Jackson,  the  State  Geologist, 
a  brother-in-law  of  Mr.  Emerson;  but  no 
poet  before  Thoreau  had  visited  these  soli 
tudes  and  described  his  experiences  there. 
James  Russell  Lowell  did  so  a  few  yearg 
later,  and,  early  in  the  century,  Hawthorne, 
Longfellow,  and  Emerson  had  tested  the 
solitude  of  the  Maine  woods,  and  written 
about  them.  The  verses  of  Emerson,  de 
scribing  his  own  experiences  there  (not  so 
well  known  as  they  should  be),  are  often 
thought  to  imply  Thoreau,  though  they 
were  written  before  Emerson  had  known 
his  younger  friend,  whose  after  adventures 
they  portray  with  felicity. 

"  In  unploughed  Maine  he  sought  the  lumberers'  gang, 
Where  from  a  hundred  lakes  young  rivers  sprang; 
He  trod  the  unplanted  forest-floor,  whereon 
The  all-seeing  sun  for  ages  hath  not  shone  ; 
Where  feeds  the  moose  and  walks  the  surly  bear, 
And  up  the  tall  mast  runs  the  woodpecker. 
He  saw  beneath  dim  aisles,  in  odorous  beds, 
The  slight  Linnaea  hang  its  twin-born  heads, 
And  blessed  the  monument  of  the  man  of  flowers, 
Which  breathes  his  sweet  fame  through  the  northem 

bowers. 

He  heard,  when  in  the  grove,  at  intervals 
With  sudden  roar  the  aged  pine-tree  falls,  — 
One  crash,  the  death-hymn  of  the  perfect  tree, 
Declares  the  close  of  its  green  century. 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  247 

Through  these  green  tents,  by  eldest  Nature  dressed, 
He  roamed,  content  alike  with  man  and  beast, 
Where  darkness  found  him  he  lay  glad  at  night ; 
There  the  red  morning  touched  him  with  its  light. 
Three  moons  his  great  heart  him  a  hermit  made, 
So  long  he  roved  at  will  the  boundless  shade." 

Thus  much  is  a  picture  of  the  Maine 
forests,  and  may  have  been  suggested  in 
.part  by  the  woodland  life  of  Dr.  Jackson 
there  while  surveying  the  State.  But  what 
follows  is  the  brave  proclamation  of  the 
poet,  for  himself  and  his  heroes,  among 
whom  Thoreau  and  John  Brown  must  be 
counted,  since  it  declares  their  creed  and 
practice,  —  while  in  the  last  couplet  the 
whole  inner  doctrine  of  Transcendental 
ism  is  set  forth  :  — 

"  The  timid  it  concerns  to  ask  their  way, 
And  fear  what  foes  in  caves  and  swamps  can  stray, 
To  make  no  step  until  the  event  is  known, 
And  ills  to  come  as  evils  past  bemoan. 
Not  so  the  wise  :  no  timid  watch  he  keeps 
To  spy  what  danger  on  his  pathway  creeps ; 
Go  where  he  will  the  wise  man  is  at  home, 
His  hearth  the  earth,  his  hall  the  azure  dome ; 
Where  his  clear  spirit  leads  him,  there 's  his  road, 
By  God's  own  light  illumined  and  foreshowed." 

Thoreau  may  have  heard  these  verses 
read  by  their  author  in  his  study,  before  he 
set  forth  on  his  first  journey  to  Maine  in 


248  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

1838  ;  they  were  first  published  in  the 
"  Dial "  in  October,  1840,  but  are  omitted, 
for  some  reason,  in  a  partial  edition  of  Em 
erson's  Poems  (in  1876).  He  never  com 
plied  with  this  description  so  far  as  to  spend 
three  months  in  the  Maine  woods,  even  in 
the  three  campaigns  which  he  made  there 
(in  1846,  in  1853,  and  in  1857),  for  in 
none  of  these  did  he  occupy  three  weeks, 
and  in  all  but  little  more  than  a  month. 
His  account  of  them,  as  now  published, 
makes  a  volume  by  itself,  which  his  friend 
Channing  edited  two  years  after  Thoreau's 
death,  and  which  contains  the  fullest  record 
of  his  studies  of  the  American  Indian.  It 
was  his  purpose  to  develop  these  studies 
into  a  book  concerning  the  Indian,  and 
for  this  purpose  he  made  endless  read 
ings  in  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  in  books  of 
travel,  and  in  all  the  available  literature  of 
the  subject.  But  the  papers  he  had  thus 
collected  were  not  left  in  such  form  that 
they  could  be  published ;  and  so  much  of  his 
untiring  diligence  seems  now  lost,  almost 
thrown  away.  Doubtless  his  friends  and 
editors,  upon  call,  will  one  day  print  de 
tached  portions  of  these  studies,  from  en- 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  249 

tries  in  his  journals,  and  from  his  common 
place  books. 

In  his  explorations  of  Concord  and  its 
vicinity,  as  well  as  in  those  longer  foot- 
journeys  which  he  took  among  the  moun 
tains  and  along  the  sea-shore  of  New  Eng 
land,  from  1838  to  1860,  Thoreau's  habits 
were  those  of  an  experienced  hunter,  though 
he  seldom  used  a  gun  in  his  years  of  man 
hood.  Upon  this  point  he  says  in  "  Wai- 
den  "  :  — 

"  Almost  every  New  England  boy  among  my 
contemporaries  shouldered  a  fowling-piece  be 
tween  the  ages  of  ten  and  fourteen ;  and  his 
hunting  and  fishing  grounds  were  not  limited, 
like  the  preserves  of  an  English  nobleman,  but 
were  more  boundless  than  even  those  of  the  sav 
age.  Perhaps  I  have  owed  to  fishing  and  hunt 
ing,  when  quite  young,  my  closest  acquaintance 
with  Nature.  They  early  introduce  us  to  and 
detain  us  in  scenery  with  which,  otherwise,  at 
that  age,  we  should  have  little  acquaintance. 
Fishermen,  hunters,  wood-choppers,  and  others, 
spending  their  lives  in  the  fields  and  woods,  in  a 
peculiar  sense  a  part  of  Nature  themselves,  are 
often  in  a  more  favorable  mood  for  observing 
her,  in  the  intervals  of  their  pursuits,  than  philos 
ophers  or  poets,  even,  who  approach  her  with 


250  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

expectation.  She  is  not  afraid  to  exhibit  herself 
to  them.  ...  I  have  actually  fished  from  the 
same  kind  of  necessity  that  the  first  fishers  did. 
I  have  long  felt  differently  about  fowling,  and 
sold  my  gun  before  I  went  to  the  woods.  I  did 
not  pity  the  fishes  nor  the  worms.  As  for  fowl 
ing,  during  the  last  years  that  I  carried  a  gun  my 
excuse  was  that  I  was  studying  ornithology,  and 
sought  only  new  or  rare  birds.  But  I  am  now 
inclined  to  think  there  is  a  finer  way  of  study 
ing  ornithology  than  this.  It  requires  so  much 
closer  attention  to  the  habits  of  the  birds  that,  if 
for  that  reason  only,  I  have  been  willing  to  omit 
the  gun.  .  .  .  We  cannot  but  pity  the  boy 
who  has  never  fired  a  gun;  he  is  no  more  hu 
mane,  while  his  education  has  been  sadly  neg 
lected." 

Emerson  mentions  that  Thoreau  preferred 
his  spy-glass  to  his  gun  to  bring  the  bird 
nearer  to  his  eye,  and  says  also  of  his  pa 
tience  in  out-door  observation  :  — 

"  He  knew  how  to  sit  immovable,  a  part  of  the 
rock  he  rested  on,  until  the  bird,  the  reptile,  the 
fish,  which  had  retired  from  him,  should  come 
back  and  resume  its  habits,  —  nay,  moved  by 
curiosity,  should  come  to  him  and  watch  him." 

And  I  have  thought  that  Emerson  had 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  251 

Thoreau  in  mind  when  lie  described  his 
M  Forester  "  :  — 

"  He  took  the  color  of  his  vest 
From  rabbit's  coat  or  grouse's  breast ; 
For  as  the  wood-kinds  lurk  and  hide, 
So  walks  the  woodman  unespied." 

The  same  friend  said  of  him :  — 

"  It  was  a  pleasure  and  a  privilege  to  walk 
with  him.  He  knew  the  country  like  a  fox  or 
bird,  and  passed  through  it  as  freely  by  paths  of 
his  own.  Under  his  arm  he  carried  an  old  mu 
sic-book  to  press  plants  ; l  in  his  pocket  his  diary 
and  pencil,  a  spy-glass  for  birds,  microscope, 
jack-knife,  and  twine.  He  wore  straw  hat,  stout 
shoes,  strong  gray  trousers,  to  brave  shrub-oaks 
and  smilax,  and  to  climb  a  tree  for  a  hawk's 
or  squirrel's  nest.  He  waded  into  the  pool  for 
the  water-plants,  and  his  strong  legs  were  no 
insignificant  part  of  his  armor.  His  intimacy 
with  animals  suggested  what  Thomas  Fuller  re 
cords  of  Butler  the  apiologist,  *  that  either  he  had 
told  the  bees  things,  or  the  bees  had  told  him.' 
Snakes  coiled  round  his  leg,  the  fishes  swam  into 
his  hand,  and  he  took  them  out  of  the  water  ;  he 

1  It  was  a  "  Primo  Flauto  "  of  his  father's,  who,  like 
himself,  was  a  sweet  player  on  the  flute,  and  had  per 
formed  with  that  instrument  in  the  parish  choir,  before 
the  day  of  church-organs  in  Concord. 


252  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

pulled  the  woodchuck  out  of  its  hole  by  the  tail, 
and  took  the  foxes  under  his  protection  from  the 
hunters.  He  confessed  that  he  sometimes  felt 
like  a  hound  or  a  panther,  and,  if  born  among 
Indians,  would  have  been  a  fell  hunter.  But, 
restrained  by  his  Massachusetts  culture,  he  played 
out  the  game  in  the  mild  form  of  botany  and 
ichthyology.  His  power  of  observation  seemed 
to  indicate  additional  senses  ;  he  saw  as  with 
microscope,  heard  as  with  ear-trumpet,  and  his 
memory  was  a  photographic  register  of  all  he 
saw  and  heard.  Every  fact  lay  in  order  and 
glory  in  his  mind,  a  type  of  the  order  and  beauty 
of  the  whole." 

It  was  this  poetic  and  coordinating  vision 
of  the  natural  world  which  distinguished 
Thoreau  from  the  swarm  of  naturalists,  and 
raised  him  to  the  rank  of  a  philosopher 
even  in  his  tedious  daily  observations. 
Channing,  no  less  than  Emerson,  has  ob 
served  and  noted  this  trait,  giving  to  his 
friend  the  exact  title  of  "  poet-naturalist," 
and  also,  in  his  poem,  "  The  Wanderer," 
bestowing  on  him  the  queer  name  of  Idolon, 
which  he  thus  explains  :  — 

I  "  So  strangely  was  the  general  current  mixed 
/  With  his  vexed  native  blood  in  its  crank  wit, 
/  That  as  a  mirror  shone  the  common  world 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  253 

To  this  observing  youth,  —  whom  noting,  thence 
I  called  Idolon,  —  ever  firm  to  mark 
Swiftly  reflected  in  himself  the  Whole." 

In  an  earlier  poem  Channing  had  called 
him  "  Rudolpho,"  and  had  thus  portrayed 
his  daily  and  nightly  habits  of  observa 
tion  :  — 

"  I  see  Rudolpho  cross  our  honest  fields 
Collapsed  with  thought,  and  as  the  Stagyrite 
At  intellpctual  problems,  mastering 
Day  after  day  part  of  the  world's  concern. 
Nor  welcome  dawns  nor  shrinking  nights  him  menace, 
Still  adding  to  his  list  beetle  and  bee,  — 
Of  what  the  vireo  builds  a  pensile  nest, 
And  why  the  peetweet  drops  her  giant  egg 
In  wheezing  meadows,  odorous  with  sweet  brake. 
Who  wonders  that  the  flesh  declines  to  grow 
Along  his  sallow  pits  ?  or  that  his  life, 
To  social  pleasure  careless,  pines  away 
In  dry  seclusion  and  unfruitful  shade? 
I  must  admire  thy  brave  apprenticeship 
To  those  dry  forages,  although  the  worldling 
Laugh  in  his  sleeve  at  thy  compelled  devotion. 
So  shalt  thou  learn,  Rudolpho,  as  thou  walk'st, 
More  from  the  winding  lanes  where  Nature  leaves 
Her  unaspiring  creatures,  and  surpass 
In  some  fine  saunter  her  acclivity." 

The  hint  here  given  that  Thoreau  injured 
his  once  robust  health  by  his  habits  of  out 
door  study  and  the  hardships  he  imposed 
on  himself,  had  too  much  truth  in  it.  Grow- 


254  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ing  up  with  great  strength  of  body  and 
limb,  and  having  cultivated  his  physical  ad 
vantages  by  a  temperate  youth  much  exer 
cised  with  manual  labor,  in  which  he  took 
pleasure,  Thoreau  could  not  learn  the  les 
son  of  moderation  in  those  pursuits  to  which 
his  nature  inclined.  He  exposed  himself 
in  his  journeys  and  night  encampments  to 
cold  and  hunger,  and  changes  of  weather, 
which  the  strongest  cannot  brave  with  im 
punity.  Mr.  Edward  Hoar,  who  traveled 
with  him  in  the  Maine  woods  in  1857,  —  a 
journey  of  three  hundred  and  twenty-five 
miles  with  a  canoe  and  an  Indian,  among 
the  head-waters  of  the  Kennebec,  Penob- 
scot,  and  St.  John's  rivers,  —  and  who  in 
1858  visited  the  White  Mountains  with 
him,  remembers,  with  a  shiver  to  this  day, 
the  rigor  of  a  night  spent  on  the  bare  rocks 
of  Mount  Washington,  with  insufficient 
blankets,  —  Thoreau  sleeping  from  habit, 
but  himself  lying  wakeful  all  night,  and 
gazing  at  the  coldest  of  full  moons.  It  was 
after  such  an  experience  as  this  on  Monad- 
noc,  whither  Thoreau  and  Channing  went 
to  camp  out  for  a  week  in  August,  I860, 
that  the  latter  wrote :  — 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  255 

"  With  the  night, 

Reserved  companion,  cool  and  sparsely  clad, 
Dream,  till  the  threefold  hour  with  lowly  voice 
Steals  whispering  in  thy  frame,  *  Rise,  valiant  youth ! 
The  dawn  draws  on  apace,  envious  of  thee, 
And  polar  in  his  gait ;  advance  thy  limbs, 
Nor  strive  to  heat  the  stones/  " 

Thoreau  had  much  scorn  for  weakness 
like  this,  and  said  of  his  comrade,  "  I  fear 
that  he  did  not  improve  all  the  night  as  he 
might  have  done,  to  sleep."  This  was  his 
last  excursion,  and  he  died  within  less  than 
two  years  afterward.  The  account  of  it 
which  Channing  has  given  may  therefore 
be  read  with  interest :  — 

"  He  ascended  such  hills  as  Monadnoc  by  his 
own  path  ;  would  lay  down  his  map  on  the  sum 
mit  and  draw  a  line  to  the  point  he  proposed  to 
visit  below,  —  perhaps  forty  miles  away  on  the 
landscape,  and  set  off  bravely  to  make  the  '  short 
cut.'  The  lowland  people  wondered  to  see  him 
scaling  the  heights  as  if  he  had  lost  his  way,  or 
at  his  jumping  over  their  cow-yard  fences, — 
asking  if  he  had  fallen  from  the  clouds.  In  a 
walk  like  this  he  always  carried  his  umbrella ; 
and  on  this  Monadnoc  trip,  when  about  a  mile 
from  the  station  (in  Troy,  N.  H.),  a  torrent  of 
rain  came  down  ;  without  the  umbrella  his  books, 
blankets,  maps,  and  provisions  would  all  have 


256  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

been  spoiled,  or  the  morning  lost  by  delay.  On 
the  mountain  there  being  a  thick  soaking  fog, 
the  first  object  was  to  camp  and  make  tea.1  He 
spent  five  nights  in  camp,  having  built  another 
hut,  to  get  varied  views.  Flowers,  birds,  lichens, 
and  the  rocks  were  carefully  examined,  all  parts 
of  the  mountain  were  visited,  and  as  accurate  a 
map  as  could  be  made  by  pocket  compass  was 
carefully  sketched  and  drawn  out,  in  the  five 
days  spent  there,  —  with  notes  of  the  striking 
aerial  phenomena,  incidents  of  travel  and  natural 
history.  The  fatigue,  the  blazing  sun,  the  face 
getting  broiled,  the  pint-cup  never  scoured,  shav 
ing  unutterable,  your  stockings  dreary,  having 
taken  to  peat,  —  not  all  the  books  in  the  world, 
as  Sancho  says,  could  contain  the  adventures  of 
a  week  in  camping.  The  wild,  free  life,  the  open 
air,  the  new  and  strange  sounds  by  night  and 
day,  the  odd  and  bewildering  rocks,  amid  which 
a  person  can  be  lost  within  a  rod  of  camp ;  the 
strange  cries  of  visitors  to  the  summit ;  the  great 

1  Thoreau  says  of  this  adventure:  "After  putting  our 
packs  under  a  rock,  having  a  good  hatchet,  I  proceeded 
to  build  a  substantial  house.  This  was  done  about  dark, 
and  by  that  time  we  were  as  wet  as  if  we  had  stood  in  a 
hogshead  of  water.  We  then  built  a  fire  before  the  door, 
directly  on  the  site  of  our  camp  of  two  years  ago.  Stand 
ing  before  this,  and  turning  round  slowly,  like  meat  that 
is  roasting,  we  were  as  dry,  if  not  drier  than  ever,  after 
a  few  hours,  and  so,  at  last,  we  turned  in." 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  257 

Valley  over  to  "Wachusett,  with  its  thunder-storms 
and  battles  in  the  cloud  ;  the  farmers'  back 
yards  in  Jaffrey,  where  the  family  cotton  can  be 
seen  bleaching  on  the  grass,  but  no  trace  of  the 
pigmy  family ;  the  dry,  soft  air  all  night,  the 
lack  of  dew  in  the  morning ;  the  want  of  water, 
—  a  pint  being  a  good  deal,  —  these,  and  similar 
things  make  up  some  part  of  such  an  excur- 


These  excursions  were  common  with 
Thoreau,  but  less  so  with  Channing,  who 
therefore,  notes  down  many  things  that  his 
friend  would  not  think  worth  recording,  ex 
cept  as  a  part  of  that  calendar  of  Nature 
which  he  set  himself  to  keep,  and  of  which 
his  journals,  for  more  than  twenty  years, 
are  the  record.  From  these  he  made  up 
his  printed  volumes,  and  there  may  be  read 
the  details  that  he  registered.  He  had 
gauges  for  the  height  of  the  river,  noted 
the  temperature  of  springs  and  ponds,  the 
tints  of  the  morning  and  evening  sky,  the 
flowering  and  fruit  of  plants,  all  the  habits 
of  birds  and  animals,  and  every  aspect  of 
nature  from  the  smallest  to  the  greatest. 
Much  of  this  is  the  dryest  detail,  but  every 
where  you  come  upon  strokes  of  beauty,  in 

17 


258  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

a  single  word-picture,  or  in  a  page  of  idyl 
lic  description,  like  this  of  the  Concord 
heifer,  which  might  be  a  poem  of  Theoc 
ritus,  or  one  of  the  lost  bucolics  of  Mos» 
chus :  — 

"  One  more  confiding  heifer,  the  fairest  of  the 
herd,  did  by  degrees  approach,  as  if  to  take  some 
morsel  from  our  hands,  while  our  hearts  leaped 
to  our  mouths  with  expectation  and  delight.  She 
by  degrees  drew  near  with  her  fair  limbs  pro 
gressive,  making  pretense  of  browsing;  nearer 
and  nearer  till  there  was  wafted  to  us  the  bo 
vine  fragrance,  —  cream  of  all  the  dairies  that 
ever  were  or  will  be,  —  and  then  she  raised  her 
gentle  muzzle  toward  us,  and  snuffed  an  honest 
recognition  within  hand's  reach.  I  saw  it  was 
possible  for  his  herd  to  inspire  with  love  the 
herdsman.  She  was  as  delicately  featured  as 
a  hind ;  her  hide  was  mingled  white  and  fawn 
color ;  on  her  muzzle's  tip  there  was  a  white 
spot  not  bigger  than  a  daisy  ;  and  on  her  side 
turned  toward  me  the  map  of  Asia  plain  to  see. 
Farewell,  dear  heifer !  though  thou  forgettest 
me,  my  prayer  to  heaven  shall  be  that  thou 
may'st  not  forget  thyself. 

*'  I  saw  her  name  was  Sumach.  And  by  the 
kindred  spots  I  knew  her  mother,  more  sedate 
and  matronly,  with  full-grown  bag,  and  on  her 


IN  WOOD  AND  FIELD.  259 

sides  was  Asia,  great  and  small,  the  plains  of 
Tartary,  even  to  the  pole,  while  on  her  daughter's 
was  Asia  Minor.  She  was  not  disposed  to  wan 
ton  with  the  herdsman.  As  I  walked  the  heifer 
followed  me,  and  took  an  apple  from  my  hand, 
and  seemed  to  care  more  for  the  hand  than  the 
apple.  So  innocent  a  face  I  have  rarely  seen  on 
any  creature,  and  I  have  looked  in  the  face  of 
many  heifers ;  and  as  she  took  the  apple  from 
my  hand,  I  caught  the  apple  of  her  eye.  There 
was  no  sinister  expression.  She  smelled  as  sweet 
as  the  clethra  blossom.  For  horns,  though  she 
had  them,  they  were  so  well  disposed  in  the  right 
place,  but  neither  up  nor  down,  that  I  do  not 
now  remember  she  had  any." 

Or  take  this  apostrophe  to  the  "  Queen 
of  Night,  the  Huntress  Diana,"  which  is  not 
a  translation  from  some  Greek  worshipper, 
but  the  sincere  ascription  of  a  New  England 
hunter  of  the  noblest  deer:  — 

"  My  dear,  my  dewy  sister,  let  thy  rain  de 
scend  on  me !  I  not  only  love  thee,  but  I  love 
the  best  of  thee,  —  that  is  to  love  thee  rarely. 
I  do  not  love  thee  every  day  —  commonly  I  love 
those  who  are  less  than  thee ;  I  love  thee  only 
on  great  days.  Thy  dewy  words  feed  me  like  the 
manna  of  the  morning.  I  am  as  much  thy  sister 
as  thy  brother  j  thou  art  as  much  my  brother  as 


\ 

260  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

my  sister.  It  is  a  portion  of  thee  and  a  portion 
of  me  which  are  of  kin.  O  my  sister  !  O  Diana ! 
thy  tracks  are  on  the  eastern  hill ;  thou  newly 
didst  pass  that  way.  I,  the  hunter,  saw  them  in 
the  morning  dew.  My  eyes  are  the  hounds  that 
pursued  thee.  I  hear  thee  ;  thou  canst  speak,  I 
cannot ;  I  fear  and  forget  to  answer ;  I  am  oc 
cupied  with  hearing.  I  awoke  and  thought  of 
thee ;  thou  wast  present  to  my  mind.  How 
earnest  thou  there  ?  Was  I  not  present  to  thee, 
likewise  ?  " 

In  such  a  lofty  mystical  strain  did  this 
Concord  Endymion  declare  his  passion  for 
Nature,  in  whose  green  lap  he  slumbers  now 
on  the  hill-side  which  the  goddess  nightly 
revisits. 

"  O  sister  of  the  sun,  draw  near, 
With  softly-moving  step  and  slow, 
For  dreaming  not  of  earthly  woe 
Thou  seest  Endymion  sleeping  here ! " 


CHAPTER  XL 

PERSONAL  TKAITS  AND   SOCIAL   LIFE. 

THE  face  of  Thoreau,  once  seen,  could 
not  easily  be  forgotten,  so  strong  was  the 
mark  that  genius  had  set  upon  it.  The 
portrait  of  him,  which  has  been  commonly 
engraved,  though,  it  bore  some  resemblance 
at  the  time  it  was  taken  (by  S.  W.  Rowse, 
in  1854),  was  never  a  very  exact  likeness. 
A  few  years  later  he  began  to  wear  his 
beard  long,  and  this  fine  silken  muffler  for 
his  delicate  throat  and  lungs,  was  also  an 
ornament  to  his  grave  and  thoughtful  face, 
concealing  its  weakest  feature,  a  receding 
chin.  The  head  engraved  for  this  volume  is 
from  a  photograph  taken,  in  1861,  at  New 
Bedford,  and  shows  him  as  he  was  in  his 
last  years.  His  personal  traits  were  not  star 
tling  and  commanding  like,  those  of  Webster, 
who  drew  the  eyes  of  all  men  wherever  he 
appeared,  but  they  were  peculiar,  and  dwelt 
long  in  the  memory.  His  features  were 


262  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

prominent,  his  eyes  large,  round,  and  deep- 
set,  under  bold  brows,  and  full  of  fearless 
meditation ;  the  color  varying  from  blue  to 
gray,  as  if  with  the  moods  of  his  mind.  A 
youth  who  saw  him  for  the  first  time,  said 
with  a  start,  "  How  deep  and  clear  is  the 
mark  that  thought  sets  upon  a  man's  face !  " 
And,  indeed,  no  man  could  fail  to  recognize 
in  him  that  rare  intangible  essence  we  call 
thought ;  his  slight  figure  was  active  with 
it,  while  in  his  face  it  became  contempla 
tive,  as  if,  like  his  own  peasant,  he  were 
"  meditating  some  vast  and  sunny  prob 
lem."  Channing  says  of  his  appearance: — • 

"  In  height  he  was  about  the  average  ;  in  his 
build  spare,  with  limbs  that  were  rather  longer 
than  usual,  or  of  which  he  made  a  longer  use. 
His  features  were  marked  ;  the  nose  aquiline  or 
very  Roman,  like  one  of  the  portraits  of  Caesar 
(more  like  a  beak,  as  was  said)  ;  large  overhang 
ing  brows  above  the  deepest-set  blue  eyes  that 
could  be  seen,  —  blue  in  certain  lights  and  in 
others  gray  ;  the  forehead  not  unusually  broad  or 
high,  full  of  concentrated  energy  and  purpose  ; 
the  mouth  with  prominent  lips,  pursed  up  with 
meaning  and  thought  when  silent,  and  giving  out 
When  open  a  stream  of  the  most  varied  and  un- 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    263 

usual  and  instructive  sayings.  His  whole  figure 
had  an  active  earnestness,  as  if  he  had  no  mo 
ment  to  waste ;  the  clenched  hand  betokened 
purpose.  In  walking  he  made  a  short  cut,  if  he 
could,  and  when  sitting  in  the  shade  or  by  the 
wall-side,  seemed  merely  the  clearer  to  look  for 
ward  into  the  next  piece  of  activity.  The  in  ten 
sity  of  his  mind,  like  Dante's,  conveyed  the 
breathing  of  aloofness,  —  his  eyes  bent  on  the 
ground,  his  long  swinging  gait,  his  hands  perhaps 
clasped  behind  him,  or  held  closely  at  his  side, — 
the  fingers  made  into  a  fist." 

It  is  not  possible  to  describe  him  more 
exactly. 

In  December,  1854,  Thoreau  went  to 
lecture  at  Nantucket,  and  on  Ms  way  spent 
a  day  or  two  with  one  of  his  correspond 
ents,  Daniel  Ricketson  of  New  Bedford,  — 
reaching  his  house  on  Christmas  day.  His 
host,  who  then  saw  him  for  the  first  time, 
thus  recorded  his  impressions  :  — 

"  I  had  expected  him  at  noon,  but  as  he  did 
not  arrive,  I  had  given  him  up  for  the  day.  In 
the  latter  part  of  the  afternoon,  I  was  clearing 
off  the  snow,  which  had  fallen  during  the  day, 
from  my  front  steps,  when,  looking  up,  I  saw  a 
man  walking  up  the  carriage-road,  bearing  a  port 
manteau  in  one  hand  and  an  umbrella  in  the 


264  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

other.  He  was  dressed  in  a  long  overcoat  of 
dark  color,  and  wore  a  dark  soft  hat.  I  had  no 
suspicion  it  was  Thoreau,  and  rather  supposed  it 
was  a  pedler  of  small  wares." 

This  was  a  common  mistake  to  make 
about  Thoreau.  When  he  ran  the  gaunt 
let  of  the  Cape  Cod  villages,  —  "  feeling  as 
strange,"  he  says,  "  as  if  he  were  in  a  town 
in  China,"  —  one  of  the  old  fishermen  could 
not  believe  that  he  had  not  something 
to  sell,  as  Bronson  Alcott  had  when  he 
perambulated  Eastern  Virginia  and  North 
Carolina  in  1819-22,  peddling  silks  and 
jewelry.  Being  assured  that  Thoreau  was 
not  peddling  spectacles  or  books,  the  fisher 
man  said  at  last :  "  Well,  it  makes  no  odds 
what  it  is  you  carry,  so  long  as  you  carry 
Truth  along  with  you." 

"  As  Thoreau  came  near  me,"  continues  Mr. 
Ricketson,  "  he  stopped  and  said,  '  You  do  not 
know  me.'  It  flashed  at  once  on  my  mind  that 
the  person  before  me  was  my  correspondent, 
whom  in  my  imagination  I  had  figured  as  stout 
and  robust,  instead  of  the  small  and  rather  infe 
rior-looking  man  before  me.  I  concealed  my 
disappointment,  and  at  once  replied,  '  I  presume 
this  is  Mr.  Thoreau.'  Taking  his  portmanteau, 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    265 

I  conducted  him  to  his  room,  already  awaiting 
him.  My  disappointment  at  his  personal  ap 
pearance  passed  off  on  hearing  his  conversation 
at  the  table  and  during  the  evening ;  and  rarely 
through  the  years  of  my  acquaintance  with  him 
did  his  presence  conflict  with  his  noble  powers  of 
mind,  his  rich  conversation,  and  broad  erudition. 
His  face  was  afterwards  greatly  improved  in 
manly  expression  by  the  growth  of  his  beard, 
which  he  wore  in  full  during  the  later  years  of 
his  life  ;  but  when  I  first  saw  him  he  had  just 
been  sitting  for  the  crayon  portrait  of  1854, 
which  represents  him  without  the  beard.  The 
'  ambrotype '  of  him,  which  is  engraved  for  your 
volume,  was  taken  for  me  by  Dunshee,  at  New 
Bedford,  August  21,  1861,  on  his  last  visit  to  me 
at  Brooklawn.  His  health  was  then  failing,  — 
he  had  a  racking  cough,  — but  his  face,  except  a 
shade  of  sadness  in  the  eyes,  did  not  show  it. 
Of  this  portrait,  Miss  Sophia  Thoreau,  to  whom 
I  sent  it  soon  after  her  brother's  death,  wrote  me, 
May  26,  1862  :  'I  cannot  tell  you  how  agree 
ably  surprised  I  was,  on  opening  the  little  box, 
to  find  my  own  lost  brother  again.  I  could  not 
restrain  my  tears.  The  picture  is  invaluable  to 
us.  I  discover  a  slight  shade  about  the  eyes,  ex 
pressive  of  weariness  ;  but  a  stranger  might  not 
observe  it.  I  am  very  glad  to  possess  a  picture 
of  so  late  a  date.  The  crayon,  drawn  eight  years 


266  HENRY  D.    THOREAU. 

ago  next  summer,  we  considered  good ;  it  be 
trays  the  poet.  Mr.  Channing,  Mr.  Emerson, 
Mr.  Alcott,  and  many  other  friends  who  have 
looked  at  the  ambrotype,  express  much  satisfac 
tion.'  " 

Of  Thoreau's  appearance  then  (at  the 
age  of  thirty-seven),  Mr.  Ricketson  goes  on 
to  say :  — 

"  The  most  expressive  feature  of  his  face  was 
his  eye,  blue  in  color,  and  full  of  the  greatest  hu 
manity  and  intelligence.  His  head  was  of  me 
dium  size,  the  same  as  that  of  Emerson,  and  he 
wore  a  number  seven  hat.  His  arms  were 
rather  long,  his  legs  short,  and  his  hands  and 
feet  rather  large.  His  sloping  shoulders  were  a 
mark  of  observation.  But  when  in  usual  health 
he  was  strong  and  vigorous,  a  remarkable  pe 
destrian,  tiring  out  nearly  all  his  companions  in 
his  prolonged  tramps  through  woods  and  marshes, 
when  in  pursuit  of  some  rare  plant.  In  Tho- 
reau,  as  in  Dr.  Kane,  Lord  Nelson,  and  other 
heroic  men,  it  was  the  spirit  more  than  the  tem 
ple  in  which  it  dwelt,  that  made  the  man." 

A  strange  mistake  has  prevailed  as  to  the 
supposed  churlishness  and  cynical  severity 
of  Thoreau,  which  Mr.  Alcott,  in  one  of 
his  octogenarian  sonnets,  has  corrected,  and 


PERSONAL   TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    267 

which  all  who  knew  the  man  would  protest 
against. 

Of  his  domestic  character  Mr.  Ricketson 
writes :  — 

"  Some  have  accused  him  of  being  an  imitator 
of  Emerson,  others  as  unsocial,  impracticable,  and 
ascetic.  Now,  he  was  none  of  these.  A  more 
original  man  never  lived,  nor  one  more  thor 
oughly  a  personification  of  civility.  Having  been 
an  occasional  guest  at  his  house,  I  can  assert  that 
no  man  could  hold  a  finer  relationship  with  his 
family  than  he«" 

Channing  says  the  same  thing  more 
quaintly :  — 

"  In  his  own  home  he  was  one  of  those  charac 
ters  who  may  be  called  household  treasures  ;  al 
ways  on  the  spot  with  skillful  eye  and  hand,  to 
raise  the  best  melons,  plant  the  orchard  with  the 
choicest  trees,  and  act  as  extempore  mechanic; 
fond  of  the  pets,  —  his  sister's  flowers  or  sacred 
tabby  —  kittens  being  his  favorites,  —  he  would 
play  with  them  by  the  half  hour." 

He  was  sometimes  given  to  music  and 
song,  and  now  and  then,  in  moments  of 
great  hilarity,  would  dance  gayly,  —  as  he 
did  once  at  Brooklawn,  in  the  presence  of 
his  host,  Mr.  Ricketson,  and  Mr.  Alcott9 


268  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

who  was  also  visiting  there.  On  the  same 
occasion  he  sung  his  unique  song  of  "  Tom 
Bowline,"  which  none  who  heard  would 
ever  forget,  and  finished  the  evening  with 
his  dance. 

Hearing  Mr.  Ricketson  speak  of  this 
dance,  Miss  Thoreau  said :  — 

"  I  have  so  often  witnessed  the  like,  that  I  can 
easily  imagine  how  it  was  ;  and  I  remember  that 
Henry  gave  me  some  account  of  it.  I  recollect 
he  said  he  did  not  scruple  to  tread  on  Mr.  Al- 
cott's  toes." 

Mr.  Ricketson's  own  account  is  this  :  — 

"  One  afternoon,  when  my  wife  was  playing 
an  air  upon  the  piano,  —  '  Highland  Laddie,' 
perhaps,  —  Thoreau  became  very  hilarious,  sang 
*  Tom  Bowline,'  and  finally  entered  upon  an 
improvised  dance.  Not  being  able  to  stand  what 
appeared  to  me  at  the  time  the  somewhat  ludi 
crous  appearance  of  our  Walden  hermit,  I  re 
treated  to  my  '  shanty,'  a  short  distance  from  my 
house  ;  while  my  older  and  more  humor-loving 
friend  Alcott  remained  and  saw  it  through,  much 
to  his  amusement.  It  left  a  pleasant  memory, 
which  I  recorded  in  some  humble  lines  that  after- 
tvards  appeared  in  my  '  Autumn  Sheaf.'  " 

After  Thoreau 's  return  home  from  this 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    269 

visit,  his  New  Bedford  friend  seems  to  have 
sent  him  a  copy  of  the  words  and  music  of 
"  Tom  Bowline,"  which  was  duly  acknowl 
edged  and  handed  over  to  the  musical  peo 
ple  of  Concord  for  them  to  play  and  sing. 
It  is  a  fine  old  pathetic  sailor-song  of  Dib- 
din's,  which  pleased  Thoreau  (whose  imagi 
nation  delighted  in  the  sea),  'find  perhaps 
reminded  him  of  his  brother  John.  As 
Thoreau  sang  it,  the  verses  ran  thus :  — 

"  Here  a  sheer  hulk  lies  poor  Tom  Bowline, 

The  darling  of  our  crew  ; 
No  more  he  '11  hear  the  tempest  howling, 

For  death  has  broached  him  to. 
His  form  was  of  the  manliest  beauty  ; 

His  heart  was  kind  and  soft ; 
Faithful,  below,  he  did  his  duty, 

But  now  he  's  gone  aloft. 

"-.Tom  never  from  his  word  departed, 

His  virtues  were  so  rare  ; 
His  friends  were  many  and  true-hearted, 

His  Poll  was  kind  and  fair. 
And  then  he  'd  sing  so  blithe  and  jolly  ; 

Ah,  many  's  the  time  and  oft ! 
But  mirth  is  changed  to  melancholy, 

For  Tom  is  gone  aloft. 

"  Yet  shall  poor  Tom  find  pleasant  weather 

When  He  who  all  commands 
Shall  give,  to  call  life's  crew  together, 
The  word  to  pipe  all  hands. 


270  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

Thus  death,  who  kings  and  tars  dispatches, 

In  vain  Tom's  life  has  doffed  ; 
For  though  his  body  's  under  hatches, 

His  soul  is  gone  aloft !  " 

Another  of  bis  songs  was  Moore's  "  Ca« 
nadian  Boat  Song,"  with  its  chorus,  — 

"  Row  brothers,  row." 

Mrs.  W.  H.  Forbes,  who  knew  him  in  her 
childhood,  from  the  age  of  six  to  that  of  fif 
teen  more  particularly,  and  who  first  remem 
bers  him  in  his  hut  at  Walden,  writes  me :  — 

"  The  time  when  Mr.  Thoreau  was  our  more 
intimate  playfellow  must  have  been  in  the  years 
from  1850  to  1855.  He  used  to  come  in,  at 
dusk,  as  my  brother  and  I  sat  on  the  rug  before 
the  dining-room  fire,  and,  taking  the  great  green 
rocking-chair,  he  would  tell  us  stories.  Those  I 
remember  were  his  own  adventures,  as  a  child. 
He  began  with  telling  us  of  the  different  houses 
he  had  lived  in,  and  what  he  could  remember 
'about  each.  The  house  where  he  was  born  was 
on  the  Virginia  road,  near  the  old  Bedford  road. 
The  only  thing  be  remembered  about  that  house 
was  that  from  its  windows  he  saw  a  flock  of  geese 
walking  along  in  a  row  on  the  other  side  of  the 
road ;  but  to  show  what  a  long  memory  he  had, 
when  he  told  his  mother  of  this,  she  said  the  only 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    271 

time  he  could  have  seen  that  sight  was,  when  he 
was  about  eight  months  old,  for  they  left  that 
house  then.  Soon  after,  he  lived  in  the  old  house 
on  the  Lexington  road,  nearly  opposite  Mr.  Em 
erson's.  There  he  was  tossed  by  a  cow  as  he 
played  near  the  door,  in  his  red  flannel  dress, — 
and  so  on,  with  a  story  for  every  house.  He  used 
to  delight  us  with  the  adventures  of  a  brood  of  fall 
chickens,  which  slept  at  night  in  a  tall  old  fash 
ioned  fig-drum  in  the  kitchen,  and  as  their  bed 
was  not  changed  when  they  grew  larger,  they 
packed  themselves  every  night  each  in  its  own 
place,  and  grew  up,  not  shapely,  but  shaped  to 
each  other  and  the  drum,  like  figs  ! 

"  Sometimes  he  would  play  juggler  tricks  for 
us,  and  swallow  his  knife  and  produce  it  again 
from  our  ears  or  noses.  We  usually  ran  to  bring 
some  apples  for  him  as  soon  as  he  came  in,  and 
often  he  would  cut  one  in  halves  in  fine  points 
that  scarcely  showed  on  close  examination,  and 
then  the  joke  was  to  ask  Father  to  break  it  for 
us  and  see  it  fall  to  pieces  in  his  hands.  But 
perhaps  the  evenings  most  charming  were  those 
when  he  brought  some  ears  of  pop-corn  in  his 
>ocket  and  headed  an  expedition  to  the  garret  to 
hunt  out  the  old  brass  warming-pan ;  in  which  he 
would  put  the  corn,  and  hold  it  out  and  shake  it 
over  the  fire  till  it  was  heated  through,  and  at 
last,  as  we  listened,  the  rattling  changed  to  pop- 


272  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ping.  When  this  became  very  brisk,  he  would 
hold  the  pan  over  the  rug  and  lift  the  lid,  and  a 
beautiful  fountain  of  the  white  corn  flew  all  over 
us.  It  required  both  strength  and  patience  to  hold 
out  the  heavy  warming-pan  at  arm's  length  so 
long,  and  no  one  else  ever  gave  us  that  pleasure. 
"  I  remember  his  singing '  Tom  Bowline '  to  us, 
and  also  playing  on  his  flute,  but  that  was  earlier. 
In  the  summer  he  used  to  make  willow  whistles, 
and  trumpets  out  of  the  stems  of  squash  leaves,  and 
onion  leaves.  When  he  found  fine  berries  dur 
ing  his  walks,  he  always  remembered  us,  and 
came  to  arrange  a  huckleberrying  for  us.  He 
took  charge  of  the  '  hay  rigging  '  with  the  load  of 
children,  who  sat  on  the  floor  which  was  spread 
with  hay,  covered  with  a  buffalo-robe  ;  he  sat 
on  a  board  placed  across  the  front  and  drove, 
and  led  the  frolic  with  his  jokes  and  laughter  as 
we  jolted  along,  while  the  elders  of  the  family 
accompanied  us  in  a  *  carryall.'  Either  he  had 
great  tact  and  skill  in  managing  us  and  keeping 
our  spirits  and  play  within  bounds,  or  else  he  be 
came  a  child  in  sympathy  with  us,  for  I  do  not 
remember  a  check  or  reproof  from  him,  no  mat 
ter  how  noisy  we  were.  He  always  was  most 
kind  to  me  and  made  it  his  especial  care  to  es 
tablish  me  in  the  *  thickest  places,'  as  we  used  to 
call  them.  Those  sunny  afternoons  are  bright 
memories,  and  the  lamb-kill  flowers  and  sweet 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    273 

4  everlasting,'  always  recall  them  and  his  kind 
care.  Once  in  awhile  he  took  us  on  the  river 
in  his  boat,  a  rare  pleasure  then  ;  and  I  remem 
ber  one  brilliant  autumn  afternoon,  when  he  took 
us  to  gather  the  wild  grapes  overhanging  the 
river,  and  we  brought  home  a  load  of  crimson 
and  golden  boughs  as  well.  He  never  took  us 
to  walk  with  him,  but  sometimes  joined  us  for  a 
little  way,  if  he  met  us  in  the  woods  on  Sunday 
afternoons.  He  made  those  few  steps  memorable 
by  showing  us  many  wonders  in  so  short  a  space : 
perhaps  the  only  chincapin  oak  in  Concord,  so 
hidden  that  no  one  but  himself  could  have  dis 
covered  it  —  or  some  remarkable  bird,  or  nest,  or 
flower.  He  took  great  interest  in  my  garden  of 
wild  flowers,  and  used  to  bring  me  seeds,  or 
roots,  of  rare  plants.  In  his  last  illness  it  did 
not  occur  to  us  that  he  would  care  to  see  us,  but 
his  sister  told  my  mother  that  he  watched  us 
from  the  window  as  we  passed,  and  said  :  *  Why 
don't  they  come  to  see  me  ?  I  love  them  as  if 
they  were  my  own.'  After  that  we  went  often, 
and  he  always  made  us  so  welcome  that  we  liked 
to  go.  I  remember  our  last  meetings  with  as 
much  pleasure  as  the  old  play-days." 

Although  so  great  a  traveler  in  a  small 
circle  —  being  every  day  a-field  when  not 
too  ill, — he  was  also  a  great  stay-at-home. 
18 


274  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

He  never  crossed  the  ocean,  nor  saw  Niagara 
or  the  Mississippi  until  the  year  before  his 
death.  He  lived  within  twenty  miles  of  Bos 
ton,  but  seldom  went  there,  except  to  pass 
through  it  on  his  way  to  the  Maine  woods, 
to  Cape  Cod,  to  the  house  of  his  friend, 
Marston  Watson  at  Plymouth,  or  to  Daniel 
Ricketson's  at  New  Bedford.  To  the  latter 
he  wrote  in  February,  1855  :  — 

"  I  did  not  go  to  Boston,  for,  with  regard  to 
that  place  I  sympathize  with  one  of  my  neigh 
bors  (George  Minott),  an  old  man,  who  has  not 
been  there  since  the  last  war,  when  he  was  com 
pelled  to  go.  No,  I  have  a  real  genius  for  stay 
ing  at  home." 

What  took  him  from  home  in  the  winter 
season  was  generally  some  engagement  to 
lecture,  of  which  he  had  many  after  his 
Waldeii  life  became  a  little  known  abroad. 

From  the  year  1847  Thoreau  may  be 
said  to  have  fairly  entered  on  his  career  as 
author  and  lecturer ;  having  taken  all  the 
needful  degrees  and  endured  most  of  the 
mortifications  necessary  for  the  public  pro 
fession  of  authorship.  Up  to  that  time  he 
had  supported  himself,  except  while  in  col 
lege,  chiefly  by  the  labor  of  his  hands; 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    275 

after  1847,  though  still  devoted  to  manual 
labor  occasionally,  he  yet  worked  chiefly 
with  his  head  as  thinker,  observer,  surveyor, 
magazine  contributor,  and  lecturer. 

His  friends  were  the  first  promoters  of 
his  lectures,  and  among  his  correspondence 
are  some  letters  from  Hawthorne,  inviting 
him  to  the  Salem  Lyceum.  The  first  of 
these  letters  is  dated,  Salem,  October  21, 
1848,  and  runs  thus  :  — 

"Mr  DEAR  SIR,  —  The  managers  of  the  Sa 
lem  Lyceum,  sometime  ago,  voted  that  you 
should  be  requested  to  deliver  a  lecture  before 
that  Institution  during  the  approaching  season. 
I  know  not  whether  Mr.  Chever,  the  late  corre 
sponding  secretary,  communicated  the  vote  to 
you ;  at  all  events,  no  answer  has  been  received, 
and  as  Mr.  Chever's  successor  in  office,  I  am  re 
quested  to  repeat  the  invitation.  Permit  me  to 
add  my  own  earnest  wishes  that  you  will  accept 
it ;  and  also,  laying  aside  my  official  dignity,  to 
express  my  wife's  desire  and  my  own  that  you 
will  be  our  guest,  if  you  do  come.  In  case  of 
your  compliance,  the  Managers  desire  to  know 
at  what  time  it  will  best  suit  you  to  deliver  the 
lecture.  Very  truly  yours, 

"NATHL  HAWTHORNE, 
*'  Cor.  Sec'y,  Salem  Lyceum* 


276  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

"  P.  S.  I  live  at  No.  14  Mall  Street,  where  I 
shall  be  very  happy  to  see  you.  The  stated  fee 
for  lectures  is  $20." 

A  month  later,  Hawthorne,  who  had  re 
ceived  an  affirmative  answer  from  Thoreau, 
wrote  to  him  from  Boston  (November  20, 
1848),  as  follows  :  — 

"  MY  DEAR  THOREAU,  —  I  did  not  sooner 
write  you,  because  there  were  preengagements  for 
the  two  or  three  first  lectures,  so  that  I  could 
not  arrange  matters  to  have  you  come  during  the 
present  month.  But,  as  it  happens,  the  expected 
lectures  have  failed  us,  and  we  now  depend  on 
you  to  come  the  very  next  Wednesday.  I  shall 
announce  you  in  the  paper  of  to-morrow,  so  you 
must  come.  I  regret  that  I  could  not  give  you 
longer  notice.  "We  shall  expect  you  on  Wednes 
day  at  No.  14  Mall  Street.  Yours  truly, 

"  NATHL  HAWTHORNE. 

"If  it  be  utterly  impossible  for  you  to  come, 
pray  write  me  a  line  so  that  I  may  get  it  Wed 
nesday  evening.  But  by  all  means  come. 

"  This  secretaryship  is  an  intolerable  bore.  I 
have  traveled  thirty  miles,  this  wet  day,  on  no 
other  business." 

Apparently  another  lecture  was  wanted 
by  the  Salem  people  the  same  winter,  for 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    277 

on  the  19th  of  February,  1849,  when  the 
"  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac " 
was  in  press,  Hawthorne  wrote  again, 
thus : — 

"  The  managers  request  that  you  will  lecture 
before  the  Salem  Lyceum  on  Wednesday  even 
ing  after  next,  that  is  to  say,  on  the  28th  inst. 
May  we  depend  on  you  ?  Please  to  answer  im 
mediately,  if  convenient.  Mr.  Alcott  delighted 
my  wife  and  me,  the  other  evening,  by  announ 
cing  that  you  had  a  book  in  press.  I  rejoice  at  it, 
and  nothing  doubt  of  such  success  as  will  be 
worth  having.  Should  your  manuscripts  all  be 
in  the  printer's  hands,  I  suppose  you  can  reclaim 
one  of  them  for  a  single  evening's  use,  to  be  re 
turned  the  next  morning,  —  or  perhaps  that  In 
dian  lecture,  which  you  mentioned  to  me,  is  in  a 
state  of  forwardness.  Either  that,  or  a  continua 
tion  of  the  Walden  experiment  (or  indeed,  any 
thing  else),  will  be  acceptable.  We  shall  expect 
you  at  14  Mall  Street.  Very  truly  yours, 

"NATHL  HAWTHORNE." 

These  letters  were  written  just  before 
Hawthorne  was  turned  out  of  his  office  in 
the  Salem  custom-house,  and  while  his  own 
literary  success  was  still  in  abeyance,  —  the 
"  Scarlet  Letter  "  not  being  published  till  a 


280  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

out  in  all  weathers  during  his  daily  excur 
sions,  he  naturally  dressed  himself  for  what 
he  had  to  do. 

As  may  be  inferred  from  his  correspond 
ence  with  Horace  Greeley,  Thoreau's  whole 
income  from  authorship  during  the  twenty 
years  that  he  practiced  that  profession,  can 
not  have  exceeded  a  few  hundred  dollars 
yearly,  —  not  half  enough  in  most  years  to 
supply  even  his  few  wants.  He  would 
never  be  indebted  to  any  person  pecunia 
rily,  and  therefore  he  found  out  other  ways 
of  earning  his  subsistence  and  paying  his 
obligations,  —  gardening,  fence -building, 
white- washing,  pencil-making,  land-survey 
ing,  etc.^  —  for  he  had  great  mechanical 
skill,  and  a  patient,  conscientious  industry 
in  whatever  he  undertook.  When  his 
father,  who  had  been  long  living  in  other 
men's  houses,  undertook,  at  last,  to  build 
one  of  his  own,  Henry  worked  upon  it,  and 
performed  no  small  part  of  the  manual  la 
bor.  He  had  no  false  pride  in  such  mat 
ters,  —  was,  indeed,  rather  proud  of  his 
workmanship,  and  averse  to  the  gentility 
even  of  his  industrious  village. 

During  his  first  residence  at  Mr.  Emer- 


PERSONAL   TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE.    281 

son's  in  1841-43,  Thoreau  managed  the 
garden  and  did  other  hand-work  for  his 
friend ;  and  when  Mr.  Emerson  went  to 
England  in  1847,  he  returned  to  the  house 
(soon  after  leaving  his  Walden  hut),  and 
took  charge  of  his  friend's  household  affairs 
in  his  absence.  In  a  letter  to  his  sister  So 
phia  (October  24,  1847),  Thoreau  says :  — 

"...  I  went  to  Boston  the  5th  of  this  month 
to  see  Mr.  Emerson  off  to  Europe.  He  sailed  in 
the  '  Washington  Irving '  packet  ship,  the  same 
in  which  Mr.  Hedge  went  before  him.  Up  to 
this  trip,  the  first  mate  aboard  this  ship  was,  as  I 
hear,  one  Stephens,  a  Concord  boy,  son  of  Ste 
phens,  the  carpenter,  who  used  to  live  above  Mr. 
Dennis.  Mr.  Emerson's  state-room  was  like  a 
carpeted  dark  closet,  about  six  feet  square,  with 
a  large  keyhole  for  a  window  (the  window  was 
about  as  big  as  a  saucer,  and  the  glass  two  inches 
thick),  not  to  mention  another  skylight  overhead 
in  the  deck,  of  the  size  of  an  oblong  doughnut, 
and  about  as  opaque.  Of  course,  it  would  be  in 
vain  to  look  up,  if  any  contemplative  promenader 
put  his  foot  upon  it.  Such  will  be  his  lodgings 
for  two  or  three  weeks ;  and  instead  of  a  walk  in 
Walden  woods,  he  will  take  a  promenade  on  deck, 
where  the  few  trees,  you  know,  are  stripped  of 
their  bark." 


282  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

There  is  a  poem  of  Thoreau's,  of  uncer 
tain  date,  called  "  The  Departure,"  which, 
as  I  suppose,  expresses  his  emotions  at  leav 
ing  finally,  in  1848,  the  friendly  house  of 
Emerson,  where  he  had  dwelt  so  long,  upon 
terms  of  such  ideal  intimacy.  It  was  never 
seen  by  his  friends,  so  far  as  I  can  learn, 
until  after  his  death,  when  Sophia  Thoreau 
gave  it  to  me,  along  with  other  poems,  for 
publication  in  the  "  Boston  Commonwealth," 
in  1863.  Since  then  it  has  been  mentioned 
as  a  poem  written  in  anticipation  of  death. 
This  is  not  so ;  it  was  certainly  written  long 
before  his  illness. 

"  In  this  roadstead  I  have  ridden, 
In  this  covert  I  have  hidden : 
Friendly  thoughts  were  cliffs  to  me, 
And  I  hid  beneath  their  lee. 

"  This  true  people  took  the  stranger, 
And  warm-hearted  housed  the  ranger; 
They  received  their  roving  guest, 
And  have  fed  him  with  the  best ; 

"  Whatsoe'er  the  land  afforded 
To  the  stranger's  wish  accorded,  — 
Shook  the  olive,  stripped  the  vine, 
And  expressed  the  strengthening  wine. 

"  And  by  night  they  did  spread  o'er  him 
What  by  day  they  spread  before  him; 


PERSONAL  TRAITS  AND  SOCIAL  LIFE. 

That  good  will  which  was  repast 
Was  his  covering  at  last. 

"  The  stranger  moored  him  to  their  pier 
Without  anxiety  or  fear ; 
By  day  he  walked  the  sloping  land,  — 
By  night  the  gentle  heavens  he  scanned. 

"  When  first  his  bark  stood  inland 
To  the  coast  of  that  far  Finland, 
Sweet-watered  brooks  came  tumbling  to  the  shor^ 
The  weary  mariner  to  restore. 

"  And  still  he  stayed  from  day  to  day, 
If  he  their  kindness  might  repay ; 
But  more  and  more 
The  sullen  waves  came  rolling  toward  the  shore. 

"  And  still,  the  more  the  stranger  waited, 
The  less  his  argosy  was  freighted ; 
And  still  the  more  he  stayed, 
The  less  his  debt  was  paid. 

"  So  he  unfurled  his  shrouded  mast 
To  receive  the  fragrant  blast,  — 
And  that  same  refreshing  gale 
Which  had  woo'd  him  to  remain 
Again  and  again ;  — 
It  was  that  filled  his  sail 
And  drove  him  to  the  main. 

*  All  day  the  low  hung  clouds 
Dropped  tears  into  the  sea, 
And  the  wind  amid  the  shrouds 
Sighed  plaintively." 


CHAPTER  XII. 

POET,  MOEALIST,   AND    PHILOSOPHER. 

THE  character  of  poet  is  so  high  and  so 
rare,  in  any  modern  civilization,  and  spe 
cially  in  our  American  career  of  nationality, 
that  it  behooves  us  to  mark  and  claim  all 
our  true  poets,  before  they  are  classified 
under  some  other  name,  —  as  philosophers, 
naturalists,  romancers,  or  historians.  Thus 
Emerson  is  primarily  and  chiefly  a  poet, 
and  only  a  philosopher  in  his  second  inten 
tion  ;  and  thus  also  Thoreau,  though  a  nat 
uralist  by  habit,  and  a  moralist  by  con 
stitution,  was  inwardly  a  poet  by  force  of 
that  shaping  and  controlling  imagination, 
which  was  his  strongest  faculty.  His  mind 
tended  naturally  to  the  ideal  side.  He 
would  have  been  an  idealist  in  any  circum 
stances  ;  a  fluent  and  glowing  poet,  had  he 
been  born  among  a  people  to  whom  poesy 
is  native,  like  the  Greeks,  the  Italians,  the 
Irish.  As  it  was,  his  poetic  light  illumined 


POET,  MORALIST,  AND  PHILOSOPHER.    285 

every  wide  prospect  and  every  narrow 
cranny  in  which  his  active,  patient  spirit 
pursued  its  task.  It  was  this  inward  illu 
mination  as  well  as  the  star-like  beam  of 
Emerson's  genius  in  "  Nature,"  which  caused 
Thoreau  to  write  in  his  senior  year  at  col 
lege,  "  This  curious  world  which  we  inhabit 
is  more  wonderful  than  it  is  convenient ; 
more  beautiful  than  it  is  useful,"  and  he 
cherished  this  belief  through  life.  In  youth, 
too,  he  said,  "  The  other  world  is  all  my 
art,  my  pencils  will  draw  no  other,  my  jack- 
knife  will  cut  nothing  else  ;  I  do  not  use  it 
as  a  means."  It  was  in  this  spirit  that  he 
afterwards  uttered  the  quaint  parable,  which 
was  his  version  of  the  primitive  legend  of 
the  Golden  Age :  — 

"  I  long  ago  lost  a  hound,  a  bay  horse,  and  a 
turtle-dove,  and  am  still  on  their  trail.  Many 
are  the  travelers  I  have  spoken  concerning  them, 
describing  their  tracks  and  what  calls  they  an 
swered  to.  I  have  met  one  or  two  who  had 
heard  the  hound,  and  the  tramp  of  the  horse,  and 
even  seen  the  dove  disappear  behind  the  cloud ; 
and  they  seemed  as  anxious  to  recover  them  as  if 
they  had  lost  them  themselves." 

In  the  same  significance  read  his  little- 
known  verses,  "  The  Pilgrims." 


286  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

"  When  I  have  slumbered 

I  have  heard  sounds 

As  of  travelers  passing 

These  my  grounds. 

"  'T  was  a  sweet  music 

Wafted  them  by, 
I  could  not  tell 
If  afar  off  or  nigh. 

"  Unless  I  dreamed  it 
This  was  of  yore ; 
I  never  told  it 
To  mortal  before. 

"  Never  remembered 

But  in  my  dreams, 

What  to  me  waking 

A  miracle  seems." 

It  seems  to  have  been  the  habit  of  Tho- 
reau,  in  writing  verse,  to  compose  a  couplet, 
a  quatrain,  or  other  short  metrical  expres 
sion,  copy  it  in  his  journal,  and  afterward, 
when  these  verses  had  grown  to  a  consider 
able  number,  to  arrange  them  in  the  form 
of  a  single  piece.  This  gives  to  his  poems 
the  epigrammatic  air  which  most  of  them 
have.  After  he  was  thirty  years  old,  he 
wrote  scarcely  any  verse,  and  he  even  de 
stroyed  much  that  he  had  previously  writ 
ten,  following  in  this  the  judgment  of  Mr. 


POET,  MORALIST,   AND  PHILOSOPHER.    287 

Emerson,  rather  than  his  own,  as  he  told 
me  one  day  during  his  last  illness.  He  had 
read  all  that  was  best  in  English  and  in 
Greek  poetry,  but  was  more  familiar  with 
the  English  poets  of  Milton's  time  and  ear 
lier,  than  with  those  more  recent,  except 
his  own  townsmen  and  companions.  He 
valued  Milton  above  Shakespeare,  and  had 
a  special  love  for  JEschylus,  two  of  whose 
tragedies  he  translated.  He  had  read  Pin 
dar,  Simonides,  and  the  Greek  Anthology, 
and  wrote,  at  his  best,  as  well  as  the  finest 
of  the  Greek  lyric  poets.  Even  Emerson, 
who  was  a  severe  critic  of  his  verses,  says, 
"  His  classic  poem  on  '  Smoke '  suggests 
Simonides,  but  is  better  than  any  poem  of 
Simonides."  Indeed,  what  Greek  would 
not  be  proud  to  claim  this  fragment  as  his 
own  ? 

"  Light  winged  smoke,  Icarian  bird  ! 
Melting  thy  pinions  in  thy  upward  flight, 
Lark  without  song,  and  messenger  of  dawn,  — 

Go  thou,  my  incense,  upward  from  this  hearth, 
And  ask  the  gods  to  pardon  this  clear  flame." 

No  complete  collection  of  Thoreau's  poems 
has  ever  been  made.  Amid  much  that  is 
harsh  and  crude,  such  a  book  would  contain 
many  verses  sure  to  survive  for  centuries. 


288  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

As  a  moralist,  the  bent  of  Thoreau  is 
more  clearly  seen  by  most  readers  ;  and  on 
this  side,  too,  he  was  early  and  strongly 
charged.  In  a  college  essay  of  1837  are 
these  sentences  :  — 

"  Truth  neither  exalteth  nor  humbleth  herself. 
She  is  not  too  high  for  the  low,  nor  yet  too  low 
for  the  high.  She  is  persuasive,  not  litigious, 
leaving  conscience  to  decide.  She  never  sacri- 
ficeth  her  dignity  that  she  may  secure  for  herself 
a  favorable  reception.  It  is  not  a  characteristic 
of  Truth  to  use  men  tenderly ;  nor  is  she  over 
anxious  about  appearances." 

In  another  essay  of  the  same  year  he 
wrote :  — 

"  The  order  of  things  should  be  reversed  : 
the  seventh  should  be  man's  day  of  toil,  in  which 
to  earn  his  living  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow, 
and  the  other  six  his  Sabbath  of  the  affections 
and  the  soul,  in  which  to  range  this  wide-spread 
garden,  and  drink  in  the  soft  influences  and  sub 
lime  revelations  of  Nature." 

This  was  an  anticipation  of  his  theory  of 
labor  and  leisure  set  forth  in  "  Walden," 
where  he  says  :  — 

"  For  more  than  five  years  I  maintained  my 
self  solely  by  the  labor  of  my  hands,  and  I  found 


POET,  MORALIST,   AND  PHILOSOPHER.    289 

that,  by  working  about  six  weeks  in  a  year,  I 
could  meet  all  the  expenses  of  living  ;  the  whole 
of  my  winters,  as  well  as  most  of  my  summers,  I 
had  free  and  clear  for  study.  I  found  that  the 
occupation  of  day-laborer  was  the  most  inde 
pendent  of  any,  especially  as  it  required  only 
thirty  or  forty  days  in  the  year  to  support  one." 

This  was  true  of  Thoreau,  because,  as  he 
said,  his  "greatest  skill  had  been  to  want 
but  little."  In  him  this  economy  was  a 
part  of  morality,  or  even  of  religion. 

"  The  high  moral  impulse,"  says  Chan- 
ning,  "  never  deserted  him,  and  he  resolved 
early  to  read  no  book,  take  no  walk,  under 
take  no  enterprise,  but  such  as  he  could  en 
dure  to  give  an  account  of  to  himself."  How 
early  this  austerity  appeared  in  what  he 
wrote,  has  been  little  noticed  ;  but  I  dis 
cover  it  in  his  earliest  college  essays,  before 
he  was  eighteen  years  old.  Thus,  in  such 
a  paper  of  the  year  1834,  this  passage  oc 
curs  :  — 

"  There  appears  to  be  something  noble,  some 
thing  exalted,  in  giving  up  one's  own  interest  for 
that  of  his  fellow-beings.  He  is  a  true  patriot, 
who,  casting  aside  all  selfish  thoughts,  and  not  suf 
fering  his  benevolent  intentions  to  be  polluted  by 
19 


290  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

thinking  of  the  fame  he  is  acquiring,  presses  for 
ward  in  the  great  work  he  has  undertaken,  with 
unremitted  zeal ;  who  is  as  one  pursuing  his  way 
through  a  garden  abounding  with  fruits  of  every 
description,  without  turning  aside,  or  regarding 
the  brambles  which  impede  his  progress,  but  press 
ing  onward  with  his  eyes  fixed  upon  the  golden 
fruit  before  him.  He  is  worthy  of  all  praise ;  his 
is,  indeed,  true  greatness." 

In  contrast  with  this  man  the  young 
philosopher  sets  before  us  the  man  who 
wishes,  as  the  Greeks  said,  TrA-eoveKretv,  —  to 
get  more  than  his  square  meal  at  the  ban 
quet  of  life. 

"  Aristocrats  may  say  what  they  please,  —  lib 
erty  and  equal  rights  are  and  ever  will  be  grate 
ful,  till  nature  herself  shall  change  ;  and  he  who 
is  ambitious  to  exercise  authority  over  his  fellow- 
beings,  with  no  view  to  their  benefit  or  injury, 
is  to  be  regarded  as  actuated  by  peculiarly  selfish 
motives.  Self-gratification  must  be  his  sole  ob 
ject.  Perhaps  he  is  desirous  that  his  name  may 
be  handed  down  to  posterity  ;  that  in  after  ages 
something  more  may  be  said  of  him  than  that  he 
lived  and  died.  His  deeds  may  never  be  forgot 
ten  ;  but  is  this  greatness  ?  If  so,  may  I  pass 
through  life  unheeded  and  unknown  !  " 

What  was  his  own  ambition  —  a  purpose 


POET,  MORALIST,  AXD  PHILOSOPHER.    291 

in  life  which  only  the  unthinking  could  ever 
confound  with  selfishness  —  was  expressed 
by  him  early  in  a  prayer  which  he  threw 
into  this  verse  :  — 

"  Great  God !  I  ask  Thee  for  no  meaner  pelf, 
Than  that  I  may  not  disappoint  myself ; 
That  in  my  conduct  I  may  soar  as  high 
As  I  can  now  discern  with  this  clear  eye. 
That  my  weak  hand  may  equal  my  firm  faith, 
And  my  life  practice  more  than  my  tongue  saith ; 
That  my  low  conduct  may  not  show, 

Nor  my  relenting  lines, 
That  I  thy  purpose  did  not  know, 
Or  overrated  thy  designs." 

And  it  may  be  said  of  him  that  he  acted 
this  prayer  as  well  as  uttered  it.  Says  Chan- 
ning  again  :  — 

"  In  our  estimate  of  his  character,  the  moral 
qualities  form  the  basis  ;  for  himself  rigidly  en 
joined  ;  if  in  another,  he  could  overlook  delin 
quency.  Truth  before  all  things  ;  in  all  your 
thoughts,  your  faintest  breath,  the  austerest  purity, 
the  utmost  fulfilling  of  the  interior  law  ;  faith  in 
friends,  and  an  iron  and  flinty  pursuit  of  right, 
which  nothing  can  tease  or  purchase  out  of  us." 

Thus  it  is  said  that  when  he  went  to 
prison  rather  than  pay  his  tax,  which  went 
to  support  slavery  in  South  Carolina,  and 


292  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

his  friend  Emerson  came  to  the  cell  and 
said,  "  Henry,  why  are  you  here  ?  "  the  re 
ply  was,  "  Why  are  you  not  here  ?  " 
In  this  act, 


at  first  denounced  as  "mean  and  sneaking 
and  inharH;a.stp.T"  — this  refusal Ito  ^navthft 

triflingsum  demanded  of  him  by 

cord  tax-gatherer,  —  the  outlines  of  his 
political  pniiosopny  appear;  They  were 
illuminated  afterwards  by  his  trenchant  ut> 
terances  in  jdejmncjation  of  slavery  and  Jn 
encjmiimn^  of  John  Brown,  who  attacked 
that  monster  in  its  most  vulnerable  par$. 
Tt  was  notmere  wEimn^uFa  settled  theory 


of  human  nature  and  the  institution  of 
government,  which  led  him,  in  1838,  to  re^ 
nounce  the  parish  church  and  refuse  to  pay 
its  tax,  in  1846  to  renounce  the  State  and 
refuse  tribute  to  it,  and  in  1859  to  come  for 
ward,  first  of  all  men,  in  public  support  of 
Brown  and  his  Virginia  campaign.  This 
theory  found  frequent  expression  in  his 
lectures.  In  1846  he  said  :  — 

"  Any  man  more  right  than  his  'neighbors  con 
Btitutls  a  majority  of  one  already." 

And  again  :  — 


POET,  MORALIST,  AND  PHILOSOHPER.    293 

"  I  know  this  well,  that  if  one  thousand,  if  one 
hundred,  if  ten  men  whom  I  could  name,  —  if 
ten  honest  men  only,  —  ay,  if  one  honest  man, 
ceasing  to  hold  slaves,  were  actually  to  withdraw 
from  this  copartnership,  and  be  locked  up  in  the 
county  jail  therefor,  it  would  be  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  America.  Under  a  government  which 
imprisons  any  unjustly,  the  true  place  for  a  just 
man  is  also  a  prison." 

This  sounded  hollow  then,  but  when  that 
embodiment  of  American  justice  and  mercy, 
John  Brown,  lay  bleeding  in  a  Virginia 
prison,  a  dozen  years  later,  the  significance 
of  Thoreau's  words  began  to  be  seen  ;  and 
when  a  few  years  after  our  countrymen 
were  dying  by  hundreds  of  thousands  to 
complete  what  Brown,  with  his  single  life, 
had  begun,  the  whole  truth,  as  Thoreau 
had  seen  it,  flashed  in  the  eyes  of  the  na 
tion. 

In  this^same  essay  of  1846,  on  "  Civil 
Disobedience,"  the  ultimate  truth  concern 
ing  governmentjj*  stated  in  a  passage  which 
also  does  justice  to  Daniel  Webster,  our 
"  logic-fencer  and  parliamentary  Hercules," 
as  Carlyle  called  him  in  a  letter  to  Emer 
son  in  1839.  Thoreau  said :  — 


294  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

"  Statesmen  and  legislators,  standing  so  com 
pletely  within  the  institution  (of  government) 
never  distinctly  and  nakedly  behold  it.  They 
speak  of  moving  society,  but  have  no  resting- 
place  without  it.  They  are  wont  to  forget  that 
the  world  is  not  governed  by  policy  and  expe 
diency.  Webster  never  goes  behind  government, 
and  so  cannot  speak  with  authority  about  it.  His 
words  are  wisdom  to  those  legislators  who  con 
template  no  essential  reform  in  the  existing  gov 
ernment  ;  but  for  thinkers,  and  those  who  legis 
late  for  all  time,  he  never  once  glances  at  the 
subject.  Yet  compared  with  the  cheap  professions 
of  most  reformers,  and  the  still  cheaper  wisdom 
and  eloquence  of  politicians  in  general,  his  are 
almost  the  only  sensible  and  valuable  words,  and 
we  thank  heaven  for  him.  Comparatively,  he  is 
always  strong,  original,  and,  above  all,  practical ; 
still  his  quality  is  not  wisdom,  but  prudence. 
Truth  is  always  in  harmony  with  herself,  and  is 
not  concerned  chiefly  to  reveal  the  justice  that 
may  consist  with  wrong-doing.  For  eighteen 
hundred  years  the  New  Testament  has  been 
written  ;  yet  where  is  the  legislator  who  has  wis 
dom  and  practical  talent  enough  to  avail  himself 
of  the  light  which  it  sheds  on  the  science  of  gov 
ernment  ?  " 

Such  a  legislator,   proclaiming  his  law 


POET,  MORALIST,  AND  PHILOSOPHER.    295 


from  the  scaffold,  at  last  appeared  in  John 
Brown :  — 

"  I  see  a  book  kissed  here  which  I  suppose  to 
be  the  Bible,  or  at  least  the  New  Testament. 
That  teaches  me  that  *  whatsoever  I  would  that 
men  should  do  unto  me,  I  should  do  even  so  to 
them.'  It  teaches  me  further  to  '  remember 
them  that  are  in  bonds  as  bound  with  them.'  I 
endeavored  to  act  up  to  that  instruction.  I  say 
that  I  am  yet  too  young  to  understand  that  God 
is  any  respecter  of  persons.  I  believe  that,  to  have 
interfered  as  I  have  done  in  behalf  of  His  de 
spised  poor,  was  not  wrong,  but  right." 

Before  these  simple  words  of  Brown, 
down  went  Webster  and  all  his  industry  in 
behalf  of  the  "  compromises  of  the  Consti 
tution."  When  Thoreau  heard  them,  and 
saw  the  matchless  behavior  of  his  noble 
old  friend,  he  recognized  the  hour  and  the 
man. 

"  For  once,"  he  cried  in  the  church-vestry  at 
Concord,  "  we  are  lifted  into  the  region  of  truth 
and  manhood.  No  man,  in  America,  has  ever 
stood  up  so  persistently  and  effectively  for  the 
dignity  of  human  nature ;  knowing  himself  for  a 
man,  and  the  equal  of  any  and  all  governments. 
The  only  government  that  I  recognize,  —  and  it 


\\ 


298  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

on  the  page,  up  and  down  or  across,  —  not 
mere  repetition,  but  creation,  and  which  a 
man  might  sell  his  ground  or  cattle  to 
build."  It  was  this  thirst  for  final  and  con 
centrated  expression,  and  not  love  of  fame, 
or  "literary  aspirations,"  as  poor  Greeley 
put  it,  which  urged  him  on  to  write.  For 
printing  he  cared  little,  —  and  few  authors 
since  Shakespeare  have  been  less  anxious  to 
publish  what  they  wrote.  Of  the  seven  vol 
umes  of  his  works  first  printed,  and  twenty 
more  which  may  be  published  some  day, 
only  two,  "  The  Week  "  and  "  Walden," 
appeared  in  his  lifetime,  —  though  the  ma 
terial  for  two  more  had  been  scattered 
about  in  forgotten  magazines  and  newspa 
pers,  for  his  friends  to  collect  after  his 
death.  Of  his  first  works  (and  some  of  his 
best)  it  could  be  said,  as  Thomas  Wharton 
said,  in  1781,  of  his  friend  Gray's  verses, 
"  I  yet  reflect  with  pain  upon  the  cool  re 
ception  which  those  noble  odes,  '  The  Prog 
ress  of  Poetry  '  and  4  The  Bard  '  met  with 
at  their  first  publication  ;  it  appeared  there 
were  not  twenty  people  in  England  who 
liked  them."  This  disturbed  Thoreau's 
friends,  but  not  himself ;  he  rather  rejoiced 


LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.        299 

in  the  slow  sale  of  his  first  book ;  and  when 
the  balance  of  the  edition, —  more  than  seven 
hundred  copies  out  of  one  thousand,  —  came 
back  upon  his  hands  unsold  in  1855,  and 
earlier,  he  told  me  with  glee  that  he  had 
made  an  addition  of  seven  hundred  vol 
umes  to  his  library,  and  all  of  his  own 
composition.  "  O  solitude,  obscurity,  mean 
ness  ! "  he  exclaims  in  1856  to  his  friend 
Blake,  "  I  never  triumph  so  as  when  I  have 
the  least  success  in  my  neighbors'  eyes." 
Of  course,  pride  had  something  to  do  with 
this ;  "  it  was  a  wild  stock  of  pride,"  as 
Burke  said  of  Lord  Keppel,  "  on  which  the 
tenderest  of  all  hearts  had  grafted  the 
milder  virtues."  Both  pride  and  piety  led 
him  to  write,  — 

"  Fame  cannot  tempt  the  bard 

Who  's  famous  with  his  God,, 
Nor  laurel  him  reward 

Who  has  his  Maker's  nod." 

Though  often  ranked  as  an  unbeliever, 
and  too  scornful  in  some  of  his  expressions 
concerning  the  religion  of  other  men,  Tho- 
reau  was  in  truth  deeply  religious.  Sincer 
ity  and  devotion  were  his  most  marked 
traits ;  and  both  are  seen  in  his  verses  from 


300  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

the  same   poem  ("  Inspiration ")  so  often 
quoted :  — 

"  I  will  then  trust  the  love  untold 

Which  not  my  worth  or  want  hath  bought,  — 
Which  wooed  me  young  and  wooes  me  old, 

And  to  this  evening  hath  me  brought." 

Thoreau's  business  in  life  was  observa 
tion,  thought,  and  writing,  to  which  last, 
reading  was  essential.  He  read  much,  but 
studied  more  ;  nor  was  his  reading  that  in 
discriminate,  miscellaneous  perusal  of  every 
thing  printed,  which  has  become  the  vice  of 
this  age.  He  read  books  of  travel,  scien 
tific  books,  authors  of  original  merit,  but  few 
newspapers,  of  which  he  had  a  very  poor 
opinion.  "  Read  not  the  4  Times,'  read  the 
Eternities,"  he  said.  Nor  did  he  admire 
the  magazines,  or  their  editors,  greatly.  He 
quarreled  with  "  Putnam's  Magazine,"  in 
1853-54,  and  in  1858,  after  yielding  to  the 
suggestion  of  Mr.  Emerson,  that  he  should 
contribute  to  the  "Atlantic,"  in  consequence 
of  a  dispute  with  Mr.  Lowell,  its  editor, 
about  the  omission  of  a  sentence  in  one  of 
his  articles,  he  published  no  more  in  that 
magazine  until  the  year  of  his  death  (1862), 
when  Mr.  Fields  obtained  from  him  some  of 


LIFE,   DEATH,   AND  IMMORTALITY.    301 

his  choicest  manuscripts.  He  spent  the  last 
months  of  his  life  in  revising  these,  and 
they  continued  to  appear  for  some  years 
after  his  death.  Those  which  were  published 
in  the  "  Atlantic  "  in  1878  are  passages  from 
his  journals,  selected  by  his  friend  Blake, 
who  long  had  the  custody  of  his  manu 
scripts.  These  consist  chiefly  of  his  journals 
in  thirty-nine  volumes,  many  parts  of  which 
had  already  been  printed,  either  by  Thoreau 
himself,  by  his  sister  Sophia,  or  his  friend 
Channing,  who,  in  1873,  published  a  life 
of  Thoreau,  containing  many  extracts  from 
the  journals,  which  had  never  before  been 
printed.  When  we  speak  of  his  works,  we 
should  include  Mr.  Channing' s  book  also, 
half  of  which,  at  least,  is  from  Thoreau's 
pen. 

His  method  in  writing  was  peculiarly  his 
own,  though  it  bore  some  external  resem 
blance  to  that  of  his  friends,  Emerson  and 
Alcott.  Like  them  he  early  began  to  keep 
a  journal,  which  became  both  diary  and 
commonplace  book.  But  while  they  noted 
down  the  thoughts  which  occurred  to  them, 
without  premeditation  or  consecutive  ar 
rangement,  Thoreau  made  studies  and  ob- 


302  HENRY  D.  THOREAU. 

servations  for  his  journal  as  carefully  and 
habitually  as  he  noted  the  angles  and  dis 
tances  in  surveying  a  Concord  farm.  In 
all  his  daily  walks  and  distant  journeys,  he 
took  notes  on  the  spot  of  what  occurred  to 
him,  and  these,  often  very  brief  and  sym 
bolic,  he  carefully  wrote  out,  as  soon  as  he 
could  get  time,  in  his  diary,  not  classified 
by  topics,  but  just  as  they  had  come  to  him. 
To  these  he  added  his  daily  meditations, 
sometimes  expressed  in  verse,  especially  in 
the  years  between  1837  and  1850,  but  gen 
erally  in  close  and  pertinent  prose.  Many 
details  are  found  in  his  diaries,  but  not 
such  as  are  common  in  the  diaries  of  other 
men,  —  not  trivial  but  significant  details. 
From  these  daily  entries  he  made  up  his 
essays,  his  lectures,  and  his  volumes;  all  be 
ing  slowly,  and  with  much  deliberation  and 
revision,  brought  into  the  form  in  which  he 
gave  them  to  the  public.  After  that  he 
scarcely  changed  them  at  all ;  they  had 
received  the  last  imprint  of  his  mind,  and 
he  allowed  them  to  stand  and  speak  for 
themselves.  But  before  printing,  they  un 
derwent  constant  change,  by  addition,  eras 
ure,  transposition,  correction,  and  combina- 


LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.     303 

tion.  A  given  lecture  might  be  two  years, 
or  twenty  years  in  preparation ;  or  it  might 
be,  like  his  defense  of  John  Brown,  copied 
with  little  change  from  the  pages  of  his 
diary  for  the  fortnight  previous.  But  that 
was  an  exceptional  case;  and  Thoreau  was 
stirred  and  quickened  by  the  campaign  and 
capture  of  Brown,  as  perhaps  he  had  never 
been  before. 

"  The  thought  of  that  man's  position  and  fate," 
he  said,  "  is  spoiling  many  a  man's  day  here  at 
the  North  for  other  thinking.  If  any  one  who 
has  seen  John  Brown  in  Concord,  can  pursue 
successfully  any  other  train  of  thought,  I  do  not 
know  what  he  is  made  of.  If  there  is  any  such 
who  gets  his  usual  allowance  of  sleep,  I  will 
warrant  him  to  fatten  easily  under  any  circum 
stances  which  do  not  touch  his  body  or  purse.  I 
put  a  piece  of  paper  and  a  pencil  under  my  pil 
low,  and  when  I  could  not  sleep,  I  wrote  in  the 
dark.  I  was  so  absorbed  in  him  as  to  be  sur 
prised  whenever  I  detected  the  routine  of  the 
natural  world  surviving  still,  or  met  persons  go 
ing  about  their  affairs  indifferent." 

The  fact  that  Thoreau  noted  down  his 
thoughts  by  night  as  well  as  by  day,  ap 
pears  also  from  an  entry  in  one  of  his  jour- 


304  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

nals,  where  he  is  describing  the  coming  on 
of  day,  as  witnessed  by  him  at  the  close  of 
a  September  night  in  Concord.  "  Some 
bird  flies  over,"  he  writes,  "  making  a  noise 
like  the  barking  of  a  puppy  (it  was  a 
cuckoo).  It  is  yet  so  dark  that  I  have 
dropped  my  pencil  and  cannot  find  it."  No 
writer  of  modern  times,  in  fact,  was  so  much 
awake  and  abroad  at  night,  or  has  described 
better  the  phenomena  of  darkness  and  of 
moonlight. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  some  dates  and 
incidents  concerning  a  few  of  Thoreau's 
essays.  The  celebrated  chapter  on  "  Friend 
ship,"  in  the  "  Week,"  was  written  in  the 
winter  of  1847-48,  soon  after  he  left  Wai- 
den,  and  while  he  was  a  member  of  Mr.  Em 
erson's  household  during  the  absence  of  his 
friend  in  Europe.  On  the  13th  of  January, 
1848,  Mr.  Alcott  notes  in  his  diary  :  — 

"  Henry  Thoreau  came  in  after  my  hours  with 
the  children,  and  we  had  a  good  deal  of  talk  on 
the  modes  of  popular  influence.  He  read  me  a 
manuscript  essay  of  his  on  '  Friendship,'  which 
he  has  just  written,  and  which  I  thought  superior 
to  anything  I  had  heard." 

To  the  same  period  or  a  little  later  be- 


LIFE,    DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.    305 

long  those  verses  called  "  The  Departure," 
which  declare,  under  a  similitude,  Thoreau's 
relations  with  one  family  of  his  friends. 

In  1843,  when  he  first  met  Henry  James, 
Lucretia  Mott,  and  others  who  have  since 
been  famous,  in  the  pleasant  seclusion  of 
Staten  Island,  he  wrote  a  translation  of  the 
"  Seven  Against  Thebes,"  which  has  never 
been  printed,  some  translations  from  Pindar, 
printed  in  the  "  Dial,"  in  1844,  and  two  ar 
ticles  for  the  New  York  "  Democratic  Re 
view,"  called  "  Paradise  to  be  Regained," 
and  "  The  Landlord." 

Thoreau  left  "  a  vast  amount  of  manu 
script,"  in  the  words  of  his  sister,  who  was 
his  literary  executor  until  her  death  in 
1876,  when  she  committed  her  trust  to  his 
Worcester  friend,  Mr.  Harrison  Blake. 
She  was  aided  in  the  revision  and  publica 
tion  of  the  "Excursions,"  "Maine  Woods," 
"  Letters,"  and  other  volumes  which  she 
issued  from  1862  to  1866,  by  Mr.  Emerson, 
Mr.  Channing,  and  other  friends,  —  Mr. 
Emerson  having  undertaken  that  selection 
of  letters  and  poems  from  his  mass  of  cor 
respondence  and  his  preserved  verses,  which 
appeared  in  1865.  His  purpose,  as  he  said 
20 


306  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

to  Miss  Thoreau,  was  to  exhibit  in  that  vol 
ume  "  a  most  perfect  piece  of  stoicism," 
and  he  fancied  that  she  had  "  marred  his 
classic  statue  "  by  inserting  some  tokens  of 
natural  affection  which  the  domestic  letters 
showed.  Miss  Thoreau  said  that  "  it  did 
not  seem  quite  honest  to  Henry  "  to  leave 
out  such  passages;  Mr.  Fields,  the  pub 
lisher,  agreed  with  her,  and  a  few  of  them 
were  retained.  His  correspondence,  as  a 
whole,  is  much  more  affectionate,  and  less 
pugnacious  than  would  appear  from  the 
published  volume.  He  was  fond  of  dispute, 
but  those  who  knew  him  best  loved  him 
most. 

Of  his  last  illness  his  sister  said  :  — 

"  It  was  not  possible  to  be  sad  in  his  presence. 
No  shadow  of  gloom  attaches  to  anything  in  my 
mind  connected  with  my  precious  brother.  He 
has  done  much  to  strengthen  the  faith  of  his 
friends.  Henry's  whole  life  impresses  me  as  a 
grand  miracle." 

Walking  once  with  Mr.  Alcott,  soon  af 
ter  he  passed  his  eightieth  birth  day,  as  we. 
faced  the  lovely  western  sky  in  December, 
the  old  Pythagorean  said,  "  I  always  think 
of  Thoreau  when  I  look  at  a  sunset ;  "  and 


LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.    307 

I  then  remembered  it  was  at  that  hour  Tho- 
reau  usually  walked  along  the  village  street, 
under  the  arch  of  trees,  with  the  sunset  sky 
seen  through  their  branches.  "  He  said  to 
me  in  his  last  illness,"  added  Alcott,  '  I 
shall  leave  the  world  without  a  regret,'  — 
that  was  the  saying  either  of  a  grand  egotist 
or  of  a  deeply  religious  soul."  Thoreau  was 
both,  and  both  his  egotism  and  his  devo 
tion  offended  many  of  those  who  met  him. 
His  aversion  to  the  companionship  of  men 
was  partly  religious  —  a  fondness  for  the  in 
ward  life  —  and  partly  egotism  and  scorn 
for  frivolity. 

"  Emerson  says  his  life  is  so  unprofitable  and 
shabby  for  the  most  part."  writes  Thoreau  in 
1854,  "that  he  is  driven  to  all  sorts  of  resources, 
—  and  among  the  rest  to  men.  I  tell  him  we 
differ  only  in  our  resources :  mine  is  to  get  away 
from  men.  They  very  rarely  affect  me  as  grand 
or  beautiful ;  but  I  know  that  there  is  a  sunrise 
and  a  sunset  every  day.  I  have  seen  more  men 
than  usual  lately ;  and  well  as  I  was  acquainted 
with  one,  I  am  surprised  to  find  what  vulgar  fel 
lows  they  are." 

In  1859  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Blake :  — 

"  I  have  lately  got  back  to  that  glorious  soci- 


308  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

ety  called  Solitude,  where  we  meet  our  friends 
continually,  and  can  imagine  the  outside  world 
also  to  be  peopled.  Yet  some  of  my  acquaint 
ance  would  fain  hustle  me  into  the  almshouse 
for  the  sake  of  society  ;  as  if  I  were  pining  for  that 
diet,  when  I  seem  to  myself  a  most  befriended 
man,  and  find  constant  employment.  However, 
they  do  not  believe  a  word  I  say.  They  have 
got  a  club,  the  handle  of  which  is  in  the  Parker 
House,  at  Boston,  and  with  this  they  beat  me 
from  time  to  time,  expecting  to  make  me  tender, 
or  minced  meat,  and  so  fit  for  a  club  to  dine  off. 
The  doctors  are  all  agreed  that  I  am  suffering 
for  want  of  society.  Was  never  a  case  like  it ! 
First,  I  did  not  know  that  I  was  suffering  at  all. 
Secondly,  as  an  Irishman  might  say,  I  had  thought 
it  was  indigestion  of  the  society  I  got." 

Yet  Thoreau  knew  the  value  of  society, 
and  avoided  it  oftentimes  only  because  he 
was  too  busy.  To  his  friend  Ricketson, 
who  reproached  him  for  ceasing  to  answer 
letters,  he  wrote  in  November,  1860,  just 
before  he  took  the  fatal  cold  that  termi 
nated  in  consumption  and  ended  his  life 
prematurely :  — 

"  FRIEND  RICKETSON,  —  You  know  that  I 
never  promised  to  correspond  with  you,  and  so, 
when  I  do,  I  do  more  than  I  promised.  Such 


LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.    309 

are  my  pursuits  and  habits,  that  I  rarely  go 
abroad ;  and  it  is  quite  a  habit  with  me  to  de 
cline  invitations  to  do  so.  Not  that  I  could  not 
enjoy  such  visits,  if  I  were  not  otherwise  occu 
pied.  I  have  enjoyed  very  much  my  visits  to 
you,  and  my  rides  in  your  neighborhood,  and  am 
sorry  that  I  cannot  enjoy  such  things  oftener ; 
but  life  is  short,  and  there  are  other  things  also 
to  be  done.  I  admit  that  you  are  more  social 
than  I  am,  and  more  attentive  to  '  the  common 
courtesies  of  life  ; '  but  this  is  partly  for  the  rea 
son  that  you  have  fewer  or  less  exacting  private 
pursuits.  Not  to  have  written  a  note  for  a  year 
is  with  me  a  very  venial  offense.  I  think  I  do 
not  correspond  with  any  one  so  often  as  once  in 
six  months.  I  have  a  faint  recollection  of  your 
invitation  referred  to ;  but  I  suppose  I  had  no 
new  or  particular  reason  for  declining,  and  so 
made  no  new  statement.  I  have  felt  that  you 
would  be  glad  to  see  me  almost  whenever  I  got 
ready  to  come  ;  but  1  only  offer  myself  as  a  rare 
visitor,  and  a  still  rarer  correspondent.  I  am  very 
busy,  after  my  fashion,  little  as  there  is  to  show 
for  it,  and  feel  as  if  I  could  not  spend  many  days 
nor  dollars  in  traveling ;  for  the  shortest  visit  must 
have  a  fair  margin  to  it,  and  the  days  thus  affect 
the  weeks,  you  know. 

"  Nevertheless,  we  cannot  forego  these  luxu 
ries  altogether.     Please  remember  me  to  your 


310  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

family.  I  have  a  very  pleasant  recollection  of 
your  fireside,  and  I  trust  that  I  shall  revisit  it ; 
also  of  your  shanty  and  the  surrounding  regions." 

He  did  make  a  last  visit  to  this  friend  in 
August,  1861,  after  his  return  from  Min 
nesota,  whither  he  went  with  young  Horace 
Mann,  in  June.  And  it  was  to  Mr.  Rick- 
etson  that  Sophia  Thoreau,  two  weeks  after 
her  brother's  death,  wrote  the  following  ac 
count  of  his  last  illness  :  — 

"  CONCORD,  May  20,  1862. 

"  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Profound  joy  mingles  with 
my  grief.  I  feel  as  if  something  very  beautiful 
had  happened,  —  not  death.  Although  Henry  is 
with  us  no  longer,  yet  the  memory  of  his  sweet 
and  virtuous  soul  must  ever  cheer  and  comfort 
me.  My  heart  is  filled  with  praise  to  God  for 
the  gift  of  such  a  brother,  and  may  I  never  dis 
trust  the  love  and  wisdom  of  Him  who  made  him, 
and  who  has  now  called  him  to  labor  in  more  glo 
rious  fields  than  earth  affords  ! 

"  You  ask  for  some  particulars  relating  to 
Henry's  illness.  I  feel  like  saying  that  Henry 
was  never  affected,  never  reached  by  it.  I  never 
before  saw  such  a  manifestation  of  the  power  of 
spirit  over  matter.  Very  often  I  have  heard  him 
tell  his  visitors  that  he  enjoyed  existence  as  well 
as  ever.  He  remarked  to  me  that  there  was  aa 


LIFE,  DEATH,   AND  IMMORTALITY.    311 

much  comfort  in  perfect  disease  as  in  perfect 
health,  the  mind  always  conforming  to  the  con 
dition  of  the  body.  The  thought  of  death,  he 
said,  could  not  begin  to  trouble  him.  His 
thoughts  had  entertained  him  all  his  life,  and 
did  still.  When  he  had  wakeful  nights,  he 
would  ask  me  to  arrange  the  furniture,  so  as  to 
make  fantastic  shadows  on  the  wall,  and  he 
wished  his  bed  was  in  the  form  of  a  shell  that  he 
might  curl  up  in  it.  He  considered  occupation 
as  necessary  for  the  sick  as  for  those  in  health, 
and  has  accomplished  a  vast  amount  of  labor  dur 
ing  the  past  few  months,  in  preparing  some  pa 
pers  for  the  press.  He  did  not  cease  to  call  for 
his  manuscript  till  the  last  day  of  his  life.  Dur 
ing  his  long  illness  I  never  heard  a  murmur  es 
cape  him,  or  the  slightest  wish  expressed  to 
remain  with  us.  His  perfect  contentment  was 
truly  wonderful.  None  of  his  friends  seemed  to 
realize  how  very  ill  he  was,  so  full  of  life  and 
good  cheer  did  he  seem.  One  friend,  as  if  by 
way  of  consolation,  said  to  him,  *  Well,  Mr.  Tho- 
reau,  we  must  all  go.'  Henry  replied,  '  When  I 
was  a  very  little  boy,  I  learned  that  I  must  die, 
and  I  set  that  down,  so,  of  course,  I  am  not 
disappointed  now.  Death  is  as  near  to  you  as  it 
is  to  me.' 

"There  is  very  much  that  I  should  like  to 
tfrite  you  about  my  precious  brother  had  I  time 


312  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

and  strength.  I  wish  you  to  know  how  very 
gentle,  lovely,  and  submissive  he  was  in  all  his 
ways.  His  little  study  bed  was  brought  down 
into  our  front  parlor,  when  he  could  no  longer 
walk  with  our  assistance,  and  every  arrangement 
pleased  him.  The  devotion  of  his  friends  was 
most  rare  and  touching.  His  room  was  made  fra 
grant  by  the  gifts  of  flowers  from  young  and  old. 
Fruit  of  every  kind  which  the  season  afforded, 
and  game  of  all  sorts,  were  sent  him.  It  was 
really  pathetic,  the  way  in  which  the  town  was 
moved  to  minister  to  his  comfort.  Total  strangers 
sent  grateful  messages,  remembering  the  good  he 
had  done  them.  All  this  attention  was  fully  ap 
preciated  and  very  gratifying  to  Henry.  He  would 
sometimes  say,  *  I  should  be  ashamed  to  stay  in 
this  world  after  so  much  has  been  done  for  me. 
I  could  never  repay  my  friends.'  And  they  re 
membered  him  to  the  last.  Only  about  two  hours 
before  he  left  us,  Judge  Hoar  called  with  a  bou 
quet  of  hyacinths  fresh  from  his  garden,  which 
Henry  smelt  and  said  he  liked,  and  a  few  min 
utes  after  he  was  gone  another  friend  came  with 
a  dish  of  his  favorite  jelly.  I  can  never  be  grate 
ful  enough  for  the  gentle,  easy  exit  which  was 
granted  him.  At  seven  o'clock,  Tuesday  morn 
ing,  he  became  restless,  and  desired  to  be  moved. 
Dear  Mother,  aunt  Louisa,  and  myself  were  with 
him.  His  self-possession  did  not  forsake  him.  A 


LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.    313 

little  after  eight  he  asked  to  be  raised  quite  up. 
His  breathing  grew  fainter  and  fainter,  and  with 
out  the  slightest  struggle,  he  left  us  at  nine 
o'clock,  —  but  not  alone ;  our  Heavenly  Father 
was  with  us. 

"  Your  last  letter  reached  us  by  the  evening 
mail  on  Monday.  Henry  asked  me  to  read  it  to 
him,  which  I  did.  He  enjoyed  your  letters,  and 
felt  disappointed  not  to  see  you  again.  Mr. 
Blake  and  Mr.  Brown  came  twice  to  visit  him, 
since  January.  They  were  present  at  his  funeral, 
which  took  place  in  the  church.  Mr.  Emerson 
read  such  an  address  as  no  other  man  could  have 
ione.  It  is  a  source  of  great  satisfaction  that  one 
?o  gifted  knew  and  loved  my  brother,  and  is  pre 
pared  to  speak  such  brave  words  about  him  at 
this  time.  The  '  Atlantic  Monthly  '  for  July  will 
contain  Mr.  Emerson's  memories  of  Henry.  I 
hope  that  you  saw  a  notice  of  the  services  on 
Friday,  written  by  Mr.  Fields,  in  the  '  Tran 
script.' 

"  Let  me  thank  you  for  your  very  friendly  let 
ters.  I  trust  we  shall  see  you  in  Concord,  Anni 
versary  Week.  It  would  give  me  pleasure  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  your  family,  of  whom 
my  brother  has  so  often  told  me.  If  convenient, 
will  you  please  bring  the  ambrotype  of  Henry 
which  was  taken  last  autumn  in  New  Bedford. 
I  am  interested  to  see  it.  Mr.  Channing  will 


314  HENRY  D.   THOREAU. 

take  the  crayon  likeness  to  Boston  this  week  to 
secure  some  photographs.  My  intention  was  to 
apologize  for  not  writing  you  at  this  time  ;  but 
I  must  now  trust  to  your  generosity  to  pardon 
this  hasty  letter,  written  under  a  great  pressure 
of  cares  and  amidst  frequent  interruptions.  My 
mother  unites  with  me  in  very  kind  regards  to 
your  family. 

"  Yours  truly,  S.  E.  THOREAU." 

To  Parker  Pillsbury,  who  would  fain  talk 
with  Thoreau  in  this  last  winter  concerning 
the  next  world,  the  reply  was,  "  One  world 
at  a  time."  To  a  young  friend  (Myron 
Benton)  he  wrote  a  few  weeks  before 
death :  — 

"CONCORD,  March  21,  1862. 
"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  thank  you  for  your  very 
kind  letter,  which,  ever  since  I  received  it,  I 
have  intended  to  answer  before  I  died,  how 
ever  briefly.  I  am  encouraged  to  know,  that,  so 
far  as  you  are  concerned,  I  have  not  written  my 
books  in  vain.  I  was  particularly  gratified,  some 
years  ago,  when  one  of  my  friends  and  neigh 
bors  said,  '  I  wish  you  would  write  another  book 
• —  write  it  for  me.'  He  is  actually  more  fa 
miliar  with  what  I  have  written  than  I  am  my 
self.  I  am  pleased  when  you  say  that  in  *  The 
Week  '  you  like  especially  *  those  little  snatches 


LIFE,  DEATH,   AND  IMMORTALITY.    315 

of  poetry  interspersed  through  the  book ; '  for 
these,  I  suppose,  are  the  least  attractive  to  most 
readers.  I  have  not  been  engaged  in  any  par 
ticular  work  on  Botany,  or  the  like,  though,  if  I 
were  to  live,  I  should  have  much  to  report  on 
Natural  History  generally. 

"  You  ask  particularly  after  my  health.  I 
suppose  that  I  have  not  many  months  to  live ; 
but,  of  course,  I  know  nothing  about  it.  I  may 
add,  that  I  am  enjoying  existence  as  much  as 
ever,  and  regret  nothing. 

"  Yours  truly,  HENRY  D.  THOREAU, 

"  By          SOPHIA  E.  THOREAU." 

"With  an  unfaltering  trust  in  God's 
mercies,"  wrote  Ellery  Channing,  "  and 
never  deserted  by  his  good  genius,  he  most 
bravely  and  unsparingly  passed  down  the 
inclined  plane  of  a  terrible  malady — pul 
monary  consumption ;  working  steadily  at 
the  completing  of  bis  papers  to  bis  last 
bours,  or  so  long  as  be  could  hold  tbe  pencil 
in  bis  trembling  fingers.  Yet  if  he  did  get 
a  little  sleep  to  comfort  him  in  this  year's 
campaign  of  sleepless  affliction,  he  was  sure 
to  interest  tbose  about  bim  in  bis  singular 
dreams,  more  tban  usually  fantastic.  He 
Baid  once,  tbat  having  got  a  few  moments 


316  HENRY  D.   TEOREAU. 

of  repose,  '  sleep  seemed  to  hang  round  his 
bed  in  festoons.'  He  declared  uniformly 
that  he  preferred  to  endure  with  a  clear 
mind  the  worst  penalties  of  suffering  rather 
than  be  plunged  in  a  turbid  dream  by  nar 
cotics.  His  patience  was  unfailing;  assur 
edly  he  knew  not  aught  save  resignation ; 
he  did  mightily  cheer  and  console  those 
whose  strength  was  less.  His  every  instant 
now,  his  least  thought  and  work,  sacredly 
belonged  to  them,  dearer  than  his  rapidly 
perishing  life,  whom  he  should  so  quickly 
leave  behind." 

Once  or  twice  he  shed  tears.  Upon  hear 
ing  a  wandering  musician  in  the  street 
playing  some  tune  of  his  childhood  he 
might  never  hear  again,  he  wept,  and  said 
to  his  mother,  "  Give  him  some  money  for 
me ! " 

"  Northward  he  turneth  through  a  little  door, 
And  scarce  three  steps,  ere  Music's  golden  tongue, 
Flattered  to  tears  this  aged  man  and  poor ; 
But  no  —  already  had  his  death-bell  rung, 
The  joys  of  all  his  life  were  said  and  sung." 

He  died  on  the  6th  of  May,  1862,  and 
had  a  public  funeral  from  the  parish  church 
a  few  days  later.  On  his  coffin  his  friend 


LIFE,  DEATH,  AND  IMMORTALITY.    317 

Charming  placed  several  inscriptions,  among 
them  this,  "  Hail  to  thee,  O  man  1  who  hast 
come  from  the  transitory  place  to  the  im 
perishable."  This  sentiment  may  stand  as 
faintly  marking  Thoreau's  deep,  vital  con 
viction  of  immortality,  of  which  he  never 
had  entertained  a  doubt  in  his  life.  There 
was  in  his  view  of  the  world  and  its  Maker 
no  room  for  doubt ;  so  that  when  he  was 
once  asked,  superfluously,  what  he  thought 
of  a  future  world  and  its  compensations,  he 
replied,  "  Those  were  voluntaries  I  did  not 
take,"  —  having  confined  himself  to  the 
foreordained  course  of  things.  He  is  buried 
in  the  village  cemetery,  quaintly  named 
"  Sleepy  Hollow,"  with  his  family  and 
friends  about  him  ;  one  of  whom,  surviving 
him  for  a  few  years,  said,  as  she  looked 
upon  his  low  head-stone  on  the  hillside, 
"  Concord  is  Henry's  monument,  covered 
with  suitable  inscriptions  by  his  own 
hand." 


INDEX. 


ACADEMY,  CONCORD,  46. 

Acton,  originally  a  part  of  Con 
cord,  32. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  78. 

Adams,  Samuel,  100. 

African  Slaves  in  Concord,  203- 
205. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  115,  243, 245. 

Agricola  at  Marseilles,  64. 

Alcott,  A.  Bronson,  sonnet  on 
Thoreau,  v. ;  born  in  Connecti 
cut,  63 ;  at  Concord  Lyceum, 
49  ;  visits  Dr.  Ripley,  80 ;  in  old 
age,  81 ;  goes  to  live  in  Con 
cord,  117  ;  helps  "  raise  "  Tho- 
reau's  hut,  118;  his  School 
of  Philosophy,  121 ;  an  ear 
ly  Transcendentalist,  124  ;  his 
Paradise  at  Fruitlands,  134- 
140 ;  a  friend  of  John  Brown, 
148  ;  plan  of  living  in  Concord 
woods,  155 ;  builds  a  summer- 
house  for  Emerson,  194;  his 
friendship  with  Thoreau  186  ; 
his  conversations,  187, 188, 190, 
199 ;  from  his  diary,  192,  195 
304 ;  peddler  in  Virginia,  187, 
260 ,  visits  Horace  Greeley,  188  ; 
harbors  a  fugitive  slave,  195 ; 
lends  Thoreau  his  axe,  209; 
goes  to  the  opera  with  Greeley, 
241 ;  with  Thoreau  in  New  Bed 
ford,  267 ;  his  opinion  of  Tho 
reau,  306. 

Alcott,  Louisa,  63,  91. 
AlMon,  Washington,  visits  Con 
cord,  111. 

American   literature,  Thoreau's 

view  of,  100. 
American  Slavery,  Thoreau's  op 


position  to,  195, 199, 292 ;  Johm 
Brown's  attack  upon,  292,  303. 
Assabet  River,  15,  33, 114,  202. 

BALL,  B.  W.,  135. 

Bangor,  1,  5,  245. 

Barnes,  Lucy,  109,  110. 

Barrett,  Humphrey,  a  Concord 
farmer,  89,  98,  103,  107. 

Barrett,  Joseph,  114-117. 

Bartlett,  Dr.  Josiah,  43,  44. 

Bartlett,  Robert,  190. 

Bedford  (the  town),  9,  12. 

Bedford  road,  12,  270. 

Betsey  (Thoreau),  3,  4. 

Bigelow,  Dr.  H.  J.,  62. 

Blake,  Harrison,  141,  301,  305, 
307. 

Bliss,  Rev.  Daniel,  74, 75,  99, 100. 

Bliss,  Daniel,  the  Tory,  100,  204. 

Bliss,  Phebe,  75,  205. 

Boston,  the  home  of  John  Tho 
reau,  the  Jerseyman,  2,  6;  of 
Henry  Thoreau,  27;  birth-place 
of  Emerson,  63. 

Boston  Miscellany,  220. 

Bowen,  Prof.  Francia,  62. 

Bradford,  George  P.,  46. 

Bradford,  Gershom,  105. 

Bremer,  Frederika.  141. 

Brisbane,  Albert,  133,  134. 

Brister's  Hill,  202. 

Brister,  a  freedman,  203, 205,  208. 

Brook  Farm,  134,  141. 

Brooks,  Nathan,  42,  46,  77,  105, 

Brooks,  Mrs.  Nathan,  68. 
Brown,   John,    of   Osawatomie, 
146, 185, 199,  242,  292,293, 296, 


320 


INDEX. 


Brown,  Mrs.,  of  Plymouth,  60. 
Brownson,  Orestes  A.,  53. 
Bruno,  Giordano,  quoted,  208. 
Bulkley  family  in  Concord,  33, 

39,  98. 

Burke,  Edmund,  quoted,  299. 
Buttrick,  Major,  102. 

CAMBRIDGE,  Thoreau's  residence 
in,  51 ;  letters  from,  55,  61 ; 
Thoreau's  visit  to,  196. 

Campbell,  Sir  Archibald,  68. 

Canada,  Thoreau's  excursion  to, 
233,  235. 

Cape  Cod,  236,  264. 

Carly le,  Thomas,  124,  125,  193, 
233  ;  Thoreau's  essay  on,  218- 
224. 

Channing,  Rev.  Dr.,  80,  82,  144. 

Channing,  Ellery  (the  poet),  11, 
41,  49-51,  63,  70,  135,  136,  177- 
189  ;  his  lines  on  Emerson,  69  ; 
on  Thoreau,  185,  214  ;  quoted, 
49-51 ;  his  friendship  for  Tho 
reau,  178-185  ;  his  verses  on 
Hawthorne,  188;  his  house, 
198;  his  letters  to  Thoreau, 
209,218  ;  calls  Thoreau  Idolon, 
252 ;  and  Rudolpho,  253 ;  visits 
Monadnoc,  255  ;  describes  Tho 
reau,  262,  267,  291,  315  ;  his  bi 
ography  of  Thoreau,  11,  49, 
301. 

Channing,  Rev.  W.  H.,  140,  141, 

174,  216. 

Chapman,  Dr.,  193. 
Chappaqua,  241. 

Cheney,  Mrs.,  of  Concord,  18, 93. 

Cohasset,  91, 175. 

Columella,  132. 

Concord  (town  of)  described,  32- 
40;  celebrities,  41-48,  63-96', 
farmers,  97-123  ;  Lyceum,  47, 
48,  168 :  as  a  transcendental 
capital,  135, 143, 146 ;  the  home 
of  Channing  and  Thoreau,  178  ; 
localities,  201-204;  freedmen, 
204  ;  jail,  207  ;  the  monument 
to  Thoreau,  317. 

Concord  Fight,  76,  86,  99,  102, 
109. 

Concord  grape,  34. 

Concord  River,  33,  140,  154,  167, 

175,  178, 183,  188, 199, 202, 208. 
Concord  Village,  189,  201 ;  trade 


in,  35 :  customs  of,  40,  46,  48, 

64,  72,  76,  87,  116,  12^!. 
Connecticut,  73,  82,  127,  186. 
Corner,  Nine-Acre,  70,  84,208. 

DAVENANT,  SIR  WILLIAM,  127, 164. 

"Departure,  The,"  282,  305. 

Dial,  The,  127, 135,  163,  168, 171. 
173,  212,  217,  M& 

Diana,  Ascription  to,  260. 

Dunbar.  Rev.  Asa,  8,  9,  20. 

Dunbarl  Charles,  uncle  of  Tho 
reau,  21-24,  92,  93. 

Dunbar,  Cynthia  (mother  of 
Thoreau),  8,  18,  19,  21,  24-28, 
50,  57,  92, 96,  312. 

Dunbar,  Louisa,  13-17,  21. 

EDWARDS,  JONATHAN,  quoted,  128. 

"  Egomites,"  80. 

Emerson,  Charles,  46. 

Emerson,  Miss  Mary,  19,  20,  75. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  born  in 
Boston .  63 ;  a  descendant  of 
Concord  ministers,  39;  quoted, 
37;  began  to  lecture  in  Con 
cord,  48  ;  begins  acquaintance 
with  Thoreau,  59  ;  goes  to  live 
in  Concord,  69;  draws  people 
there,  71 ;  describes  Dr.  Ripley, 
77-84  ;  describes  the  "  Concord 
Fight,"  103 ;  on  Captain  Hardy, 
121, 123;  goes  to  Europe, 281 ; 
his  "  Forester,"  251 ;  his  propo 
sition  for  an  international  maga 
zine,  193;  on  Thoreau's  ac 
quaintance  with  Nature,  251, 
252 ;  on  Thoreau's  patience  in 
observation,  250  ;  his  relations 
with  Thoreau,  189;  his  sum 
mer-house,  194,  278;  tries  to 
work  in  the  woods,  278;  praises 
Thoreau's  "Smoke,"  287;  gives 
his  funeral  eulogy,  313. 

Emerson,  William,  190. 

Endymion  of  Concord,  260. 

Essays  of  Thoreau,  in  college, 
150-163  ;  "  Effect  of  Story  Tell 
ing,"  158;  "  L'  Allegro  and  II 
Penseroso,"  156  ;  "  National 
Characteristics,"  160 ;  "  Pa- 
ley's  Common  Reasons,"  161; 
"  Punishment,"  158  ;  "  Source 
of  our  feeling  for  the  Sublime," 
159;  "  Simplicity  of  Style." 


INDEX. 


321 


Everett,  Edward,  88. 

FAIRHAVEN  CLIFFS,  153. 

Fenda,  the  fortune  teller,  204. 

Fields,  James  T.,  300,  300. 

Forbes,  Mrs.  W.  H.,  recollections 
of  Thoreau,  270-273. 

"  Forester,  The,"  verse  by  Emer 
son,  257. 

"  Fruitlands,"  in  Harvard,  135- 
137. 

Fugitive  Slave,  in  Concord,  195. 

Fuller,  Margaret,  in  Concord, 
70  ;  criticises  Thoreau 's  poems, 
169-172  ;  rejects  a  prose  article 
by  him,  173 ;  her  character, 
174  ;  in  Cambridge,  191  ;  at  a 
conversation,  190  ;  visit  to  Eu 
rope,  marriage,  and  death,  230 ; 
writes  for  the  "  Tribune,''  and 
lives  with  H.  Greeley,  217. 

GARDINER.  DR.,  79,  80. 

Garfleld,  his  ancestors,  204. 

Gilman,  Rev.  Nicholas,  128-130. 

Goodwin,  Rev.  H.  B.,  83. 

Graham,  George  R.,  222,  224. 

Graham's  Magazine,  213,  224. 

Graveyard  in  Lincoln,  204. 

Greeley,  Horace,  as  Maecenas, 
217;  editor  of  the  "Tribune,'' 
216;  described  by  Margaret 
Fuller,  217 ;  his  correspond 
ence  with  Thoreau,  219-229, 
231-240;  invites  Thoreau  to 
Chappaqua,  satirized  by  W.  E. 
Channing,  218. 

Griswold,  R.  W.,  220,  222. 

HAFIZ,  quoted,  166. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  113. 

Hampden,  John,  107. 

Hardy,  Captain,  120-122. 

Harvard  Magazine,  196. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  moves 
and  removes  to  Concord,  70 ; 
quoted,  71 ;  Channing's  verses 
on,  188  ;  Emerson's  influence 
on,  148  ;  his  "  Scarlet  Letter,'' 
277;  invites  Thoreau  to  lect 
ure  in  Salem,  276  ;  returns  to 
Concord,  278  ;  returns  thither 
from  Europe,  189. 

Herald's  Office,  London,  108. 

Heywood,  Dr.  Abiel,  38,  40-42. 

21 


Heywood,  George,  89. 

Hildreth,  S.  T.,  57. 

Hoar,  E.  R.,  90,312. 

Hoar,  Edward,  254. 

Hoar,  Miss  Elizabeth,  239. 

Hoar,  Mrs.  Samuel,  96. 

Hoar,  Samuel,  46,  72,90,  95,  112. 

Hollowell  Farm,  172,  note,  208. 

Hosmer  Cottage,  117. 

Hosmer,  Cyrus,  111. 

Hosiner,  Edmund,  118-120. 

Hosmer,  James,  98. 

Hosmer,  Joseph  (the  Major).  98. 

99,  100,  109,  111,  112,  113. 
Hosmer,  Lucy ,  110. 
Hurd,  Dr.  Isaac,  42. 

ICARUS,  202. 

Indians,   (American),  240,    242, 

248. 

Ingraham,  Cafco,  a  slave,  203. 
Ingrahaui,  Duncan,  66-68. 

JACK,  JOHN,  a  negro,  204;  epi 
taph  on,  205. 

Jackson,  Dr.  C.  T.,  246,  247. 

James,  Henry,  305. 

Jarvis,  Deacon  Francis,  76,  77. 

Jarvis,  Dr.  Edward,  76. 

Jersey,  Isle  of,  1-4. 

Journal  of  Thoreau,  2,  150, 154, 
167. 

KTAADN,    and    Thoreau' s    visit 

there,  225,  227,  228,  245. 
Keene,  N.  II.,  18. 
Kosta,  Martin,  67. 

LANE,  CHARLES,  135-141. 

Lee.  family,  114  ;  their  farm  and 
hill,  115. 

Letters  from  Maria  Thoreau,  5  ; 
from  D.  Webster,  15  ;  from  Jo- 
eiah  Quincy,  53,  61  ;  from  Dr. 
Ripley,  57,"81  ;  from  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  to  Dr.  Ripley,  82;  from 
Charles  Lane,  to  Thoreau,  137- 
140;  from  A.  G.  Peabody,  65, 
56  ;  from  K.  U".  Emerson,  155, 
193  ;  from  F.  B.  Sanborn,  197  ; 
from  Henry  Thoreau,  92,  181, 
209,  210,  216,  307,  308,  314; 
from  Horace  Greeley,219,  222- 
231,  233-240:  from  Margaret 
Fuller,  169-173  ;  from  Dr.  Rip- 


322 


INDEX. 


ley,  144-146;  from  Sophia 
Thoreau,  176,  268  306,  310, 
314  ;  letter  to  Sophia  Thoreau, 
189,  216,  281. 

Levet,  Robert,  43. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  112,  246. 

MJSCENAS,  Greeley  as,  216-241. 

Manse,  Old,  built  in  1766,  75; 
occupied  by  Hawthorne  85 ; 
Channing's  verses  on,  188 ; 
farmers  at,  86-88;  "Mosses 
from,"  183;  first  mistress  of, 
205. 

Marlboro  road,  109. 

Marryatt,  Captain,  67. 

Marvell,  Andrew,  42. 

Massey,  Gerald,  240. 

Merrlck,  Tilly,  67, 108. 

Milton,  John,  156, 157. 

Minott,  George,  22.  24,  92,  274. 

Minott,  Mrs.,  the  grandmother  of 
Thoreau,  9-11. 

Minute-Man,  statue  of,  86. 

Monadnoc,  115,  254-257. 

Moore,  Abel  ("  Captain  Hardy"), 
120,  121. 

Morton,  Edwin,  197. 

Munroe  of  Lexington  and  Con 
cord,  66  ;  William,  37, 152. 

Musketaquid,  33. 

NATURE,"  born  and  brought  up 
in  Concord,"  96 :  Thoreau's 
observation  of,  252,  285. 

ORROK,  DAVID,  2. 

Orrok,  Sarah,  2. 

Out-door  life  of  Thoreau,  at 
Walden,  209,  211  ;  in  general, 
242,  243,  249-252,  254-257  ;  by 
night,  304. 

PARKER,  THEODORE,  69;    school 

candidate,  88. 
"  Past  and  Present,"  by  Carlyle, 

notice  of,  217. 

Peabody,  A.  G.,  letter  from,  54. 
Peabody,  Elizabeth  P.,  70,  168. 
Penobscot  River,  245. 
Pepperell,  Sir  William,  129. 
Perry,  Joseph.  67. 
Phalanstery,  140,  141,  216. 
Phillips,  Wendell,  at  Concord,  49. 
Pierpont,  Sarah,  128. 


Pillsbury,  Parker,  314 

Poems,  quoted  from  Tennyson, 
31  ;  from  Ellery  Channing,  24, 
69,  119,  175,  184,  185,  215,  252, 
255  ;  Emerson's  "  Saadi",  119  ; 
"  Maine  Woods,"  246,  247  ;  Mil 
ton,  181;  Thoreau's  "Love," 
167  ;"  Sympathy,"  164  :"  The 
Maiden  in  the  East,"  165:  to 
his  brother  John,  176  ;  The  De 
parture,  282  ;  "  The  Pilgrims," 
285;  "Smoke'1  (a  fragment), 
287  ;  from  T.  P.  Sanborn,  260  ; 
from  Keats,  316. 

Poet,  the  character  of,  284. 

Ponkawtassett  Hill,  86,  182. 

Putnam's  Magazine,  235,  237. 

QUARTERLY,  MASSACHUSETTS,  230. 
Quincy,  Josiah,  52  ;  letter  from, 

53,  61 ;  certificate  in  favor  of 

Thoreau,  61. 

RALSTON,  MRS.  LAURA  DUNBAR, 
19. 

Ricketson,  Daniel,  176, 188,  263 ; 
description  of  Thoreau's  act 
ual  appearance,  266;  disap 
pointment  in  imagined  per 
sonal  appearance  of  Thoreau, 
264 ;  on  Thoreau's  domestic 
character,  267  ;  describes  Tho 
reau's  dance,  268  ;  Letters  from 
Thoreau  to,  308,  309;  Letter 
from  Sophia  Thoreau  to,  310. 

Ripley,  Dr.  (pastor  at  Concord), 
petition  to  Grand  Lodge  of  Ma 
sons,  1-9  ;  letter  from,  25  ;  cer 
tificate  in  favor  of  Thoreau's 
father,  26  ;  schism  in  parish  of, 
28,  85  ;  Thoreau  baptized  by, 
46  ;  letter  from  Edward  Everett 
to,  47  ;  letter  introducing  Tho 
reau  as  a  teacher,  57  ;  anecdotes 
of,  73-80,  86,  87  ;  letter  to  Dr. 
Channing,  81 :  reply,  82 ;  his 
prayers,  83,  84  ;  letter  on  the 
Transcendental  movement,144, 
146. 

Ripley,  Rev.  Samuel,  74. 

Ripley,  Mrs.  Sarah,  85. 

Robbins,  Caesar,  a  negro,  104, 
203. 

SANBORN,    F.   B.,   acquaintance 


INDEX. 


323 


with  Thoreau,  196;  extract 
from  diary,  198,  199;  intro 
duces  John  Brown  to  Thoreau, 
199;  letter  to  Thoreau,  197. 

Sanborn,  T.  P.,  his  "Endym- 
ion"  quoted,  260. 

Sartain,  John,  232. 

"  Service,  The,"  172. 

Sewall,  Ellen,  163. 

"  Shay,"  a  one-horse,  131-133. 

Slave,  fugitive,  195. 

Staten  Island,  89,  92,  305. 

Sunday  prospect,  152. 

Sunday  walkers,  85. 

TACITUS,  quoted,  64. 

Teufelsdrbckh,  210. 

Thoreau  family,  4,  5,  27-31. 

Thoreau,  Helen,  59-61. 

Thoreau,  Henry,  his  ancestry, 
1-10  ;  born  in  Concord,  12  ;  his 
mother,  8,  24  ;  his  father,  25  ; 
as  a  pencil-maker,  37 ;  first 
dwelling-place,  45  ;  at  the  Con 
cord  Academy,  46 ;  enters  Har 
vard  College,  46  ;  at  Chelms- 
/ord,  49  ;  his  childish  stoicism, 
50 ;  his  graduation,  51 ;  as 
school  teacher,  52 ;  a  benefi 
ciary  of  Harvard  College,  53, 54; 
his  certificate  from  Dr.  Ripley, 
57,  58  ;  from  Emerson,  59  ;  be 
ginning  of  acquaintance  with 
Emerson,  59 ;  his  "  Sic  Vita  " 
60  ;  Quincy's  certificate,  61 ; 
a  Transcendentalist,  124;  first 
essays  in  authorship,  149,  153  ; 
description  of  a  visit  to  Fair- 
haven  Cliffs,  153,  154;  his 
early  poems,  164-167  ;  his  first 
lecture,  168  ;  his  "  Walk  to  Wa- 
chusett,"  169  ;  his  earliest  com 
panion,  175;  his  friendship 
with  Ellery  Channing,  178-183; 
his  praise  of  Alcott,  186;  goes 
to  Alcott's  conversations,  18"  ; 
visits  Chappaqua  and  Walt 
Whitman,  188 ;  his  burial 
place,  189;  his  relation  with 
Emerson,  189,  190  ;  reads  his 
"  Week  '  to  Alcott,  192 ;  de 
signs  a  lodge  for  Emerson,  194  ; 
his  acquaintance  with  San- 
born,  195  ;  at  Walden,  201 ;  his 
reasons  for  going  to  Walden, 


212;  edits  "The  Week,"  212; 
talks  with  W.  H.  Channing  and 
Greeley,  216 :  his  essay  on  Car- 
lyle,  218-225;  his  paper  on 
"  Ktaadn  »  and  the  "  Maine 
Woods,"  225  ;  his  "  Week,"  230  ; 
asks  Greeley  for  a  loan,  235  ; 
his  "  Canada,"  and  "  Cape 
Cod,"  235,  236 ;  Greeley  asks 
him  to  become  a  tutor,  241; 
his  out-door  life,  242  ;  collects 
specimens  for  A^assiz,  243, 
245  ;  his  visits  to  Maine,  245, 
248  ;  as  a  naturalist,  249-252  ; 
a  night  on  Mount  Washington, 
254 ;  his  Monadnoc  trip,  256- 
257  ;  his  description  of  a  Con 
cord  heifer,  258,  259  ;  his  apos 
trophe  to  the  "Queen  of  Night," 
259:  his  face,  199,  261,266;  de 
scribed  by  Channing,  262  ;  by 
Ricketson,  263-266;  travels  on. 
Cape  Cod,  264 :  domestic  char- 
racter,  267  ,  dances,  268  ;  sings 
"  Tom  Bowline,1'  269  ;  his  so 
cial  traits,  270-273  ;  as  author 
and  lecturer,  274-277  ;  his  man 
ual  labor,  278  ;  fashion  of  his 
garments,  279 ;  income  from 
authorship,  280  ;  lives  in  Emer 
son's  household,  281 ;  his  para 
ble,  285  :  his  habit  of  versifica 
tion,  286  ;  his  reading,  286  ;  as 
naturalist,  288-291 ;  his  theory 
of  labor  and  leisure,  288 ;  hia 
political  philosophy,  292  :  eraa 
in  his  life,  297:  his  aim  in 
writing,  298  ;  his  religion,  299 ; 
his  business  in  life,  300 ;  his 
method  in  writing,  304 ;  his 
sunset  walks,  307  ;  his  aversion 
to  society,  307  ;  his  decline  and 
death,  313-316;  his  funeral, 
317. 
Thoreau,  John,  the  father,  25, 

Thoreau,  John,  the  brother,  17£ 
178. 

Thoreau,  John,  the  Jerseyma 
1,  5-7,  37. 

Thoreau,  Maria,  1-8. 

Thoreau,  Sophia,  29,  38,  44,  2* 
282,  301,  305,  310,  315 :  lettr 
from,  176,  268,  306,  310-31 
letters  to,  189,  216,  281. 


324 


INDEX. 


"Tom  Bowline,"  sung  by  Tho- 
reau,  268,  269,  272. 

Transcendentalism,  124, 125, 133, 
142,  247,  279  ;  in  New  England, 
124-126 ;  in  politics,  292-296  ; 
social,  and  unsocial,  141-145; 
at  Brook  Farm,  134  ;  at  Fruit- 
lands,  137. 

Transcendentalists  of  Concord, 
63,  70,  76,  80, 119, 134-137, 143, 
146, 148,  288,  307. 

Transcendental  Period,  124-147. 

"  Tribune,"  New  York,  217,  230, 


VERY,  JONES,  51, 190. 

WACHUSETT,  115, 138, 169,  220. 

Walden  (the  book),  196,  211,  214, 
239,  240. 

Walden  Hermitage,  201-215. 

Walden  woods,  11, 155,  202,  209, 
212,  214. 

Watson,  Marston,  188, 197. 

Webster,  Daniel,  a  lover  of  Lou 
isa  Dunbar,  13,  14;  describes 


his  native  place,  15-17 ;  his 
friendship  for  Louisa  Dunbar, 
17,  93  ;  at  the  "  Wyman  Trial," 
90  ;  his  "  rose-cold, ''  91 ;  visits 
in  Concord,  93  ;  letter  to  Mrs. 
Cheney,  94  ;  described  by  Car- 
lyle,  293;  by  Thoreau,  294; 
contrasted  with  Thoreau,  296. 

Webster,  Prof.  J.  W.,  56. 

"  Week,"  The,  ( Thoreau 's  first 
book),  183,  196,  213,  230,  240, 
269,304. 

Weiss,  Rev.  John,  57. 

"  Westminster  Review,"  240. 

Wharton,  Thomas,  298. 

Whig  Review,  238. 

Whitefield,  G.,  letter  to,  129. 

Whiting,  Colonel,  36,  46. 

Whiting,  Rev.  John,  65. 

Whitman,  Walt,  186,  188. 

Whittier,  J.  G.,  quoted,  131. 

Wiggles  worth,  Michael,  131. 

Willard,  Major,  32,  98. 

Woolman,  John,  127, 130. 

ZILPHA,  the  Walden  Circe,  203. 


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